Fact check: Trump’s claims over airline safety, veterans and pollution

The president ignored fatality-free years in aviation during the Obama administration when he declared 2017 the safest year on record and suggested that was because he has kept a sharp eye on airlines.

He represented routine and ceremonial proclamations recognising a day in remembrance of Pearl Harbour and a month in honour of military families as substantive achievements that improved care for veterans.

And his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took credit for completing work on seven Superfund anti-pollution sites, even though the actual cleaning was done by Barack Obama’s EPA.

Here are Mr Trump’s claims and the facts behind them:

Air safety

Mr Trump tweeted: “Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news – it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!”

It has been four and a half years since the last deaths involving a scheduled passenger airline in the US, when three passengers died in an Asiana Airlines plane crash at San Francisco International Airport in July 2013. It has been almost nine years since the last fatalities involving a US-registered, scheduled passenger airline in the United States. That was a Colgan Air plane that crashed on approach to Buffalo, New York, in February 2009, killing all 49 on board and a man on the ground.

Last year was notable for having no commercial passenger jet deaths worldwide, although there were two fatal regional airline crashes involving small turboprop planes in Angola and Russia. There were also fatal accidents involving cargo planes.

Mr Trump’s administration has instituted additional screening of passengers and their personal electronic devices at foreign airports with flights to the US, to prevent terrorist attacks. But there have been no new major safety regulations imposed on passenger airlines as Mr Trump rounds out his first year in office. Indeed, he has held back a regulation pending from the Obama administration that would ban shipments of rechargeable lithium batteries on passenger planes. Testing has shown that the batteries can self-ignite, creating intense fires and explosions.

The White House cited Mr Trump’s initiative to “modernise Air Traffic Control” as justification for his tweet. However, his proposal to privatise air traffic control is not in effect, so it had nothing to do with the 2017 safety record. And even its proponents say the idea is about efficiency, not safety.

Veterans’ care

Mr Trump tweeted: “We will not rest until all of America’s GREAT VETERANS can receive the care they so richly deserve. Tremendous progress has been made in a short period of time.” He then added an Instagram link showing eight accomplishments which show Mr Trump is “fighting for our veterans”.

Of the eight achievements cited, two are ceremonial proclamations – National Veterans and Military Families Month and National Pearl Harbour Remembrance Day.

Two are pieces of legislation that extended a troubled Veterans Choice programme on a temporary basis. This became necessary because the Trump administration repeatedly miscalculated the amount of taxpayer dollars available in its account to pay for care from private doctors outside the Veterans Affairs (VA) system, when veterans had to endure long waits for treatment at VA medical centres.

A fifth claim involves “tele-health,” letting doctors practice medicine across state lines using digital technology. Announced in August, it has yet to take full effect because a proposed VA regulation has not been completed. It is now being dealt with in legislation that passed the Senate and is going to the House.

A sixth claim refers to legislation that streamlines the appeals process for disability compensation claims within the VA. This step has had limited impact so far because it applies to new disability claims, not the 470,000 pending claims.

The other two initiatives he listed make it easier for the VA to discipline employees. The department has pointed to more than 1,300 employees who have been fired under Mr Trump’s watch. But the pace of dismissals is roughly on par with or a little below that during the Obama administration.

Environmental projects

The EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt claimed the environmental agency completed – or “delisted” – more Superfund sites last year than Barack Obama’s EPA did the year before, saying: “We have made it a priority to get these sites cleaned up faster and in the right way.”

The EPA removed seven Superfund clean-up sites from its priority list last year, compared with two sites delisted the year before. But records show that construction work at all seven sites highlighted by Mr Pruitt’s EPA, such as removing soil or drilling wells to suck out contaminated groundwater, was completed years before Mr Pruitt was confirmed as the agency’s chief in February.

Removing sites from the list is a procedural step that occurs after monitoring reveals that remaining levels of harmful contaminates meet clean-up targets, which were often set by the EPA decades ago.

An analysis of EPA records shows that the seven Superfund sites delisted last year fell short of the average pace set under the administrations of Mr Obama and George W Bush, even in their opening years.

Mr Trump’s proposed 2018 budget seeks to cut the Superfund programme by 30%. More than 1,300 Superfund sites on the EPA’s list are at various stages in the clean-up process.