NBC News senior correspondent Tom Costello invoked the names of President Donald Trump and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk into coverage of a Delta Air Lines plane crash that happened in Toronto, Canada.
The plane carrying 80 passengers flipped over upon landing at Toronto Pearson Airport from Minneapolis, Minn., on Monday afternoon, leaving at least nine people injured. While acknowledging that Canadian air traffic controllers were in charge of the landing, Costello tried to connect the incident to Trump firing hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as part of his plan to trim the size of government and make it more efficient.
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“I want to underscore, to pick up on the conversation you were just having though, in terms of the recent string of aviation incidents. Tom, this is gonna yet again raise the concern about FAA traffic control staffing,” Costello said. “Now, this is a Canadian tower, and this is under Canadian authority once it crosses the border, and yet as you know, there has been this talk about maybe staff cuts at the FAA as part of President Trump’s effort to trim down the federal workforce. And yet, as you know, the FAA has been complaining for years that they are understaffed and critical job positions, especially air traffic control. I was having a conversation with somebody today about whether air traffic control in America is being affected by the staff cuts, so far not to their knowledge and yet other positions related to maintaining critical equipment appear to have been cut.”
“So this is gonna feed into all of these recent incidents, and the safety of the total air traffic system is gonna be very much a part of the conversation as we go forward on this side of the border,” Costello said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday that a team with Musk’s SpaceX visited the Air Traffic Control System Command Center to get “a firsthand look at the current system” and work on creating a “new, better, modern and safer system.”
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A slew of air collisions and accidents have taken place in recent weeks. An air collision between an American Airlines flight and a military helicopter on Jan. 29 killed 67 people, including several figure skaters, over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. A separate plane crash occurred in Philadelphia, Pa., at the end of January.
In a Jan. 30 statement, Democratic California Rep. Norma Torres suggested — without evidence — that Trump was responsible for the fatal collision near Reagan National, citing his federal hiring freeze and the firing of several agency heads.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, said airlines’ commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) led to more errors in operations and caused more incidents. The day following the incident, Trump suggested DEI practices could have caused the tragic air collision in D.C.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.