In January 2025, a midair collision in Washington, D.C., between an American Airlines plane and an Army helicopter killed 67 people. Along with other recent aviation incidents, this sparked discussions of airplane safety across the United States.

Naturally, the conversation made its way to MTSU, where one of the largest college aviation programs in the country has over 1,000 students.

Sami Albakry, a sophomore professional pilot student, said that MTSU has extensive protocols in place for student safety. Student pilots are required to get a minimum of 40 hours of flight time, pass a written exam and complete a practical skills test before getting their private pilot’s license. 

“We have a very meticulous safety team and a dedicated safety director as well as an online form submission where any student can submit anonymous safety reports,” Albakry said. “In my experience, MT is extremely particular when deciding whether or not it’s safe to send students up.”

Tyler Babb, associate chair of the Department of Aerospace and program coordinator for Professional Pilot, pointed out that pilot safety is integral not only to MTSU’s program but to the aerospace industry as a whole.

“In the industry, everybody is a safety employee, and safety should be top of mind from top all the way down,” Babb said.

Babb explained that MTSU greatly expanded their safety team and protocols in the past three years. Before, safety duties were spread across several employees. With the hiring of Director of Safety Meredith Boardman, these duties were centralized.

“We struggled to find a Director of Safety,” Babb said. “I wrote on a note somewhere back in like 2015 we need a Director of Safety. After a whole lot of searches, we found [Boardman] … she’s going into year two, maybe three now, and she has really ramped up all of our safety as far as the department goes.”

Adding Boardman to the Department of Aerospace resulted in changes in MTSU’s safety policies and reporting protocols.

“She’s changed a few of our policies to be a bit more restrictive, which I think is perfectly fine,” Babb said. “And so I’m confident that we’re in a better place now than we were six years ago.”

Despite increases in safety efforts at MTSU, plane crashes are inevitable. The D.C. plane crash in January was the first major crash in the United States since 2009 and resulted in many questions about safety in the aerospace industry. When asked about rising concerns about plane crashes, Albakry blamed media sensationalization.

“Accidents are actually still trending down,” Albakry said. “I’d hate to call the crash in D.C. ‘normal’ because it was definitely a freak lapse in safety, but it’s no cause for widespread alarm.”

Babb agreed that media attention disproportionately favors tragedy, and the flights that occur safely every day are not taken into account. 

“Anything that results in clicks or views or whatever is going to burn for a time,” Babb said. “The news outlets are aware of this, and they take full advantage.”

In 2024, for example, MTSU students spent 35,000 hours flying with no major incidents. With the sheer number of hours spent in the air, accidents are inevitable.

“When something happens, obviously it’s an issue, but if you look at it from a safety perspective, look how many hours we flew without that happening,” Babb said. “The industry is the same way. It’s just very easy to hear something like ‘airplane crash’ that gets people’s attention.”

Babb theorized that the incident in D.C. was the result of poor safety practices and communication between the military helicopters and commercial planes. Although this is not a concern for MTSU students, aerospace students can learn from incidents like these because accidents and lapses in safety can happen to anyone.

“Bad things happen to good people, despite our best efforts,” Babb said. “So that’s just one of the risks of the industry. And so to just tuck it away and act like nothing happened, that’s not safe, right?”

Overall, MTSU pilots fly safely, and Babb is confident that freak accidents will not deter the public from flying.

“It’s still by far the safest mode of travel, as far as getting from point A to point B,” Babb said. “I don’t know the passenger numbers since, but the public’s still flying. You know, the airlines are still recording record numbers for flights … The industry, despite the accident, remains in a pretty good place.”

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