Jonathan C. Reiter

When you’re on vacation, the last thing you should have to worry about is being involved in a life-or-death situation. Yet for one woman visiting the Caribbean, an island getaway turned tragic. News reports state that the woman was a 57-year-old mother visiting St. Maarten from New Zealand when she was killed at Princess Juliana International Airport. According to media reports, the mothe...

It’s an airline passenger’s worst nightmare: a major airline disaster. According to media reports, an Air Canada jetliner missed crashing into four fully loaded passenger jets, coming within less than 100 feet before abruptly pulling up and completing what is known as a go-around. Go-arounds are common and occur when an airplane must circle the airport prior to landing, either because the...

People around the world were stunned when a video of airport police officers dragging a bloodied and unconscious passenger off a United Airlines plane made headlines. The ensuing public relations fallout was so intense that United announced it would drop its famous “fly the friendly skies” slogan and rebrand. Several more high-profile incidents have followed, causing people to question just...

According to reports from The Wall Street Journal and NPR, popular ridesharing service Uber leased vehicles to customers even though it knew the vehicles contained a defect that could lead to an electrical fire. Reports state that Uber purchased over 1,000 Honda models in April 2016 — all of which were defective. Despite knowing about the potential for a serious or deadly fire, Uber reporte...

Frequent flyers know that turbulence is considered normal and ultimately not dangerous for a commercial airplane. However, severe turbulence is much more than a nuisance that disrupts passengers’ sleep or causes them to spill their in-flight orange juice. In recent years, serious injuries caused by turbulence have appeared in news headlines in the U.S. and around the world — and aviation ex...

Over the past few years, “driverless” cars have captured people’s imaginations. The idea of an autonomous vehicle that effortlessly — and safely — gets you wherever you need to go without the need to lift a finger appeals to a lot of people who spend their days fighting traffic and dodging distracted or dangerous drivers. Several automakers and even tech companies have developed autonomous ...

Commercial airline pilots have extremely stressful jobs that require them to be alert and to think quickly in the event of unexpected emergencies. The last thing they need to worry about is being blinded while they’re trying to fly or land an airplane carrying hundreds of passengers. Unfortunately, a spate of recent incidents involving laser pointers highlights how people on the ground ca...

According to the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration (NHTSA), distracted driving injured 391,000 people and killed 3,500 in 2015 alone. Distracted driving has become a serious epidemic on the roads — and it’s mostly due to the rise in smartphone ownership. Overall smartphone ownership has reached 77 percent in the U.S., and about 92 percent of drivers between the ages of 18 and...

Should the country’s air traffic control towers be controlled by the private sector? That’s the question buzzing around Washington lately, after the current administration introduced plans to convert the nation’s government-run air traffic control system to a private system. In essence, the plan would cease FAA oversight over the tracking and guiding of airplanes and put it in the hands o...

Remembering the past is important for many reasons, including preventing horrific events from occurring again. The year 2017 marks 40 years since the deadliest accident in all of aviation history. It occurred on March 27,1977 on the tiny island of Tenerife, part of the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands located off the coast of West Africa. How Did the Tenerife Accident Happen? The Tener...