U.S. citizens have grown increasingly skittish about air travel in light of numerous airplane disasters under Republican President Donald Trump's new administration.
Weeks after the fatal mid-air collision between an American Airlines commercial jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C., on January 29, Trump began firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees.
The termination of crucial FAA workers was part of the administration's mass layoffs of government agencies targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk's advisory commission.
Affected air traffic control staff targeted maintenance mechanics, aeronautical information specialists, environmental protection specialists, aviation safety assistants, and management and program assistants.
However, a Transportation Department official has assured that the agency has “retained employees who perform critical safety functions."
That still didn't sit well with travelers, particularly TikToker Giselle–a.k.a. @podieswetter–who recently learned an unsettling truth behind her Spirit Airlines flight being forced to deplane.
In her viral video, Giselle explained why she was recording from Boston when she was supposed to be en route to Atlanta.
“So they board us on the plane and we’re sitting there chilling. It’s been 30 minutes, we’re thinking we’re gonna take off,” said the TikToker.
She and her fellow passengers were suddenly alerted to an inconvenient update.
“The plane people are telling us we don’t have a pilot to take us nowhere and that we have to get off the plane," she recalled.
After disembarking, she said she asked what the reason was for having nobody in the cockpit preparing for take-off on her flight.
She continued:
"I just found out that pilots are going on strike because planes keep flying out of the sky."
"I understand the pilots. I know how they feel, but why the f**k would y'all make us board on a plane knowing there's no pilot on it," she wondered.
“I’m finna pray, and I’m finna book another airline,” she details. “Because, b*tch, Spirit’s tripping, all the other airlines is falling off the sky—like, y’all better please pray for me, ‘cause there’s some real sh*t going on right now.”
TikTokers shed some light on the situation with theories, and validated that disembarking the plane, though inconvenient, was a good thing.
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A spokesperson for Spirit Airlines confirmed to the Daily Dot via email that pilots for the company were currently not on strike.
Users on X (formerly Twitter) have reported cases of no-show pilots leaving passengers stranded.
It remains unclear whether or not these incidents are the result of the recent slashing of FAA employees under the Trump Administration.
Apart from the alleged spike in pilot strikes, the airline furloughed 330 pilots on January 31, 2025, as part of a cost-cutting measure to improve the company's profitability.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), there have already been 103 aviation accidents involving all kinds of aircrafts this year.
These would include the fatal air collision in DC on January 29, 2025, followed two days later by a medical jet that crashed in Philadelphia shortly after take-off, killing seven people, including an 11-year-old girl.
The Delta flight that departed Minneapolis and crashed in Toronto, flipping the plane upside down after a weekend of heavy snowfall, miraculously had no fatalities.
Officials maintain it is still safe to fly.
The NTSB also reported there were more plane crashes between January 1, 2024 and February 21, 2024 compared to incidents this year.
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