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It's the Brian Laira Show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

Now we'll take a look at the state of aviation in our country as we mourn the 67 passengers killed in a collision between a passenger plane and a Black Hawk helicopter near Washington's Reagan National Airport last Wednesday and the crash of a Medevac helicopter

in Pennsylvania.

The tragedy last week marks the end of a decades-long safety streak in air travel in the

United States that was truly remarkable and shines new light on the troubles that

flying under the radar that have been flying

under the radar within the Federal Aviation Administration.

As we know, rather than focusing on staff shortages, ill-advised increased increases in air

traffic around Reagan National and numerous close calls that went unsolved, President Trump took to the

podium to blame the FAA's diversity and inclusion hiring plan during his news conference last

week. And that statement came despite the fact that all pilots involved in the crash were white

Americans. One was a woman that was Captain Rebecca M.

Lovac, 28-year-old from Durham, North Carolina, who her family tells us, or tells the media,

was in the top 20 percent of cadets nationwide. So we're going to try to look at what really

happened there. And then, in addition, over the weekend,

the country saw another fatal plane crash, as I mentioned this time in Philadelphia, when a medical

jet carrying six Mexican natives plummeted into a busy neighborhood. And with two crashes in one

week, many Americans are wondering how safe air travel is at this particular moment.

Joining me now to parse through the facts that we know and explain how these tragic events

could have been prevented is Oriana Pollack, Politico's aviation reporter and Jeff Wise,

...