JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As the busy Spring Break travel season gets underway, safety was on the minds of some passengers flying out of Jacksonville International Airport on Friday.
The safety concerns follow recent airplane mishaps that have made national headlines.
Friday morning, a United Airlines flight skidded off the runway at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. And on Thursday, a plane from the same airline lost a wheel while taking off from San Francisco, damaging several cars in the parking lot. The flight made an emergency landing in Los Angeles.
Earlier this week, a United flight to Fort Myers was forced to turn around after the plane’s engine caught fire.
“We were just wondering if it could happen to us because you never really know what’s going to happen with all the planes and stuff,” passenger Clara Joyce said.
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Joyce said she watched the video of the United plane’s lost wheel Thursday night just hours before her and her family’s Friday afternoon flight to Nashville.
A tire falling from the sky isn’t the only problem airlines have run into recently.
In January, Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9′s door panel flew off mid-flight.
While those recent incidents may scare Joyce and her sister a bit, other flyers said they are not worried.
“Honestly I haven’t had many incidents when I’m on a plane except for a lot of turbulence, so it doesn’t bother me too much,” Gretchen Morgan said.
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Another traveler, Connie Valarinos, also said she feels safe when she flies.
According to Safety Record for U.S Air Carriers, in the last ten years, there have been two deaths on commercial planes. In contrast, the number of deaths related to driving in Florida during the same period, is over 34,000, according to the Florida Department of Health.
With airplanes having some mishaps lately News4JAX reached out to aviation expert Ed Booth for some answers.
He said flying is safer than driving, but attributed most of the recent issues to worker error.
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“[There] aren’t enough qualified people to cover the volume the way the airline industry is heading,” Booth said. “Industry is wrestling with quality control issues.”
Booth also said what’s going on is “inexcusable” but “not cause for too much concern.”