Until the midair collision that claimed 67 lives on Jan. 29 near the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, followed soon thereafter by a number of other incidents involving planes, some of those incidents also resulting in fatalities, members of the flying public generally had exuded great confidence regarding their safety while using that mode of travel.

Now, however, many of those same travelers do not feel quite as secure, due to what has been happening during recent weeks on the air travel front.

It is clear that the level of confidence that had existed in the past will not be easily restored. It even is true that some people have cut back on the frequency of their air travel, in part to demonstrate their eroding faith over what already has evolved — and what continues to evolve — in terms of such travel and the condition of the air-traffic-control system charged with helping in a critical way to ensure their safety.

Consider some of the important, albeit very troubling, information divulged in an article in the Wall Street Journal’s May 7 edition:

– The Government Accountability Office reported last year that about three-quarters of the Federal Aviation Administration’s 138 air-traffic systems either were obsolete or potentially too difficult to reliably maintain.

– On Nov. 6, a controller was guiding a FedEx cargo plane to land at busy Newark (N.J.) Liberty International Airport when the main and backup air-traffic control radios went dead.

“Cut off from controllers, the Boeing 767 blew past Newark and flew over the Hudson River and Manhattan and into traffic lanes for planes flying into and out of (New York’s) LaGuardia Airport in Queens. FedEx said its crew complied with controller instructions and landed safely.”

– Each week, the air-traffic control system experiences about 700 communications outages, according to a senior FAA official.

That’s because the FAA uses most of its technology and equipment funding provided by the nation’s taxpayers to keep in operation equipment that in some cases dates to the 1950s — when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.

According to the Journal article, “many facilities are connected by copper-wire landlines, which are at risk of failing or being shut down before the FAA can replace them with fiber-optic connections.”

– Besides unreliability of key technology, missteps by controllers or pilots have resulted in aircraft being put on collision courses.

Said the Journal: “In early 2023, the malfunctioning of a system that distributes pilot safety notices prompted the first nationwide groundstop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

No amount of praise is adequate for the air-traffic controllers who everyday prevent aviation tragedies or catastrophes — everyday dealing with the challenges and oftentimes terrible safety odds placed before them because of presidential administrations and members of Congress — past and present — who have shirked their responsibility to provide enough funding to correct what is wrong.

Dwight Eisenhower? How many of today’s Americans can immediately state the years of his presidency? Meanwhile, are there any individuals occupying high positions in today’s Washington who cannot answer that simple question?

Yet, they are, in effect, making critical decisions potentially affecting whether people who get on a plane will arrive safely at their destination.

Regarding today’s aviation and air-traffic control systems, a conscience check is in order. And it ought to happen before the FAA, which has about 10,700 fully certified controllers, about 3,000 short of its target, loses the approximately 500 controllers eligible to retire and begin receiving federal pensions.