NTSB working to speed up accident investigations
The NTSB is working to reverse a slowdown in its reporting of probable aviation-accident causes that has occurred despite declining caseloads, agency officials told AOPA at a meeting at NTSB headquarters in Washington, D.C.
AOPA has been urging that the NTSB oversee its field investigators more directly and standardize reporting processes to help cut down the delays, said Richard McSpadden, executive director of the AOPA Air Safety Institute after the February 24 meeting.
With accident investigations down 10 to 15 percent in recent years but fatal accident reports taking about 22 months to conclude—compared with the NTSB’s targeted 12-to-18-month range for completion—the Air Safety Institute has been “pressing the NTSB for a while on timeliness.” AOPA was encouraged by the NTSB’s assurances that the effort to make accident-cause reporting more efficient—now in its data-gathering stage—would show results this year, McSpadden said.
From the personal level to industrywide impacts, final NTSB accident reports make their presence felt across aviation and beyond. The reports’ determinations of probable accident causes, accompanied by the fact-finding accomplished during investigation, can bring closure to the families of accident victims, reveal trends that affect FAA policy and resource allocation, and influence decision making by aircraft manufacturers and insurance underwriters, he said.
The Air Safety Institute’s Joseph T. Nall Report on general aviation accident trends is based on NTSB probable-cause findings for the most recent year in which causes have been determined for 80 percent of accidents. The most recent Nall Report, released in October 2019, was based on 2016 accident statistics.
Delays finding probable accident causes come to the public’s attention following high-profile accidents. For example, a probable cause has yet to be determined for the November 7, 2017, fatal crash of an Icon A5 amphibious airplane in Clearwater, Florida, that killed retired Major League Baseball star pitcher Roy Halladay despite what McSpadden described as a fairly straightforward set of circumstances and the availability of ample evidence.
“They have video, toxicology, the intact aircraft, so we asked, ‘Why is this taking two years?’ They had no good answer for it,” McSpadden said.
Probable causes, not guarantees
He noted that the NTSB’s final reports provide insight into probable causes, not an “absolute, no-doubt-in-my-mind” assertion of the cause of any aviation accident. He criticized the NTSB’s widely reported public statements that predicted a yearlong timeline for investigating the January 26 helicopter crash that killed retired National Basketball Association star Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others, given the availability of weather and terrain information, video imagery, witness accounts, and physical evidence.
“The point is, we all know what happened. Why tell the world it will take a year?” McSpadden said.
