Every day the Federal Aviation Administration watches over more than 43,000 flights.
Its airspace spans more than 5.3 million square miles.
And for the past 10 years not a single person has died in a crash on a U.S. commercial airliner.
As the saying goes, the most dangerous part of flying is the drive to the airport.
Air travel is safer than it's ever been.
But it hasn't always been this way.
In fact, it took a tragedy in 2009 to open the public's eyes to one of the biggest dangers of flying:
pilot fatigue.
Colgan Air Flight 3407 was enroute from Newark to Buffalo when it crashed into a home.
The plane stalled in the air just a few miles from its destination that a small plane has crashed in the Clarence area.
The wreckage that remain is right where apparently a house was up until this crash occurred.
The plane with some sputtering and then stopped,
there was I guess what was best described as a gigantic explosion.
All 49 people aboard the plane died.
So did a person inside the home.
The following National Transportation Safety Board investigation revealed that everything that could
have gone wrong, did.
Out of 3407, regulators and investigators who are looking at the crash and some of the causes of it
found some lapses.
They found that the pilot training was inadequate.
They found that some of the conditions in the cockpit, there was a lot of chitchat between the pilots.
The pilots were extremely fatigued.
According to the NTSB report, the first officer commuted across the country the day before the flight.
The captain logged into the company's computer system as late as 3:00 a.m.
and another crew member reported seeing the captain asleep in the crew room,
which Colgan Air supposedly discouraged.
While the NTSB was unable to determine just how big a role fatigue played in the crash,
it said pilots were likely impaired because they were tired.
The revelation led to sweeping changes throughout the aviation industry,
all around making sure pilots are well rested and in the right frame of mind to take flight.
The introduction of federal aviation regulation part 117 added new training programs, rest regulations
and requirements for pilots before they take to the skies.
And these changes have seen real results.
Lawmakers ended up increasing the number of flight hours that pilots need to have to fly for a U.S. airline.
So before this crash it was only 250 hours that a pilot needed to get the license required to fly for a U.S. airline.
And that was increased to 1500.
We have re-addressed pilot fatigue and in terms of making mandatory rest rules, insuring that pilots are fit to fly.
Airline incidents have fallen dramatically in the United States since the implementation of these rules in 2011.
The last commercial airline to crash on U.S. soil happened in 2013,
when a Asiana Airlines Flight 214 hit a seawall while landing at San Francisco International Airport.
Three people died in that crash.
But U.S. commercial airlines haven't had a fatal crash since Colgan Air.
These rules are still a work in progress.
Lawmakers are working continually to improve safety not just for pilots but for everyone working the flight.
Fatigue is not only an issue for pilots.
So in the latest FAA bill that we had last year that passed it was written in flight attendants also need rest because
you don't want to have your crew members, whose chief job is to ensure your safety, to be tired to be exhausted
when they're there handling an emergency situation.
Those rules only apply to passenger planes though
and with the recent crash of an Amazon Air cargo plane in Houston that too might change.
Though it's still early in the investigation, Atlas Air, the company who hired the pilots involved in the crash,
has recently been accused of overworking its pilots by one of its employees.
Cargo pilots who want the same rest that commercial passenger pilots have.
You to get just as tired flying a plane with a bunch of iPhones and boxes and other packages and merchandise
in the back of your plane as you do with passengers.
All in all, air travel has never been safer for the average passenger.
And since the Colgan Air crash, U.S.
airlines have transported about 8 billion passengers without a single fatal crash.
But it took a tragedy to get there.