Improved airline safety not due to Trump

On Jan. 2, the tweet addict of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. took credit for the U.S. commercial aviation safety record, which featured no crash deaths, in 2017. But he’s dead wrong.

Since the February 2009 commercial airline crash near Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground, the Federal Aviation Administration adopted several major rules to boost airline safety.

It lengthened mandatory rest periods between shifts for passenger airline pilots. But why not cargo pilots, too? Hey, here’s a job for the secretary of transportation to fix. Send her a nice tweet.

The FAA also requires co-pilots, also known as first officers, to have same 1,500 hours of flight experience as pilots. The airline industry has criticized this 1,500-hour provision and has proposed alternative ways to earn credit toward this requirement, such as substituting classroom training for flying experience.

But it’s interesting to note the opinion of Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the former U.S. Airways pilot who famously made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in 2009, saving the lives of all 155 people aboard the airplane.

“Trust me, there is no training substitute for actual flying time and real-world experience,” Sullenberger said in a Sept. 25, 2017, story in The Hill. “Efforts to reduce flying hours fly in the face of evidence and logic, and put millions of lives at risk.”

Let’s remember the professional, fully trained pilots such as Sullenberger, along with the FAA, air traffic controllers and aircraft mechanics working in the U.S. aviation industry. These are the people — and not President Trump — who deserve the credit for no deaths from U.S. commercial airline crashes in 2017.

Ed Kovalick Jr. Wickliffe