Flying's gotten safer — and less reported on. Washington crash shows how the aviation beat is fading
In the days after last week's plane collision in Washington, Pete Muntean was a fixture on the air at CNN
NEW YORK — Summoned from his couch to cover last week's plane disaster in Washington, CNN's Pete Muntean rushed in for the first of 24 live reports over the next 48 hours. At one point, he used a model airplane and helicopter to demonstrate. At another, he called President Trump “unhinged” for speculating that diversity in hiring contributed to the crash.
Even regular viewers may have wondered: Who is Pete Muntean, anyway?
As CNN's aviation correspondent and a pilot who has flown near where the collision that killed 67 people took place, Muntean illustrates the changes in what used to be an important specialty in journalism.
Precise numbers are hard to come by. But simply by the content out there, there are fewer reporters concentrating solely on what is a complex and technical beat, both because of how the business has changed and the relative safety of flying.
“I realized that planes weren't crashing and I needed a new beat,” said Bill Adair, a former reporter who wrote a book, “The Mystery of Flight 427: Inside a Crash Investigation,” about a 1994 plane crash in western Pennsylvania that killed 132 people. “That's a good thing.”
Adair switched to politics, and later created the fact-checking website PolitiFact.
Muntean, 36, was born for his job. Both of his parents were pilots, and he kept his passion for aviation even after his mother, Nancy Lynn, died when the plane she was flying in a Virginia air show crashed. Muntean was 18 at the time and witnessed it; he was the show's MC.
Shortly after, he flew his first solo flight. He keeps a plane at a small Maryland airport now and takes to the sky when time allows.
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