The NTSB is underfunded and understaffed. So it investigates accidents using the "party system."  That means the NTSB relies on those who may have caused the accident for help in investigating the accident’s cause. Unfortunately, the "party participants" seldom point the NTSB towards evidence in their files that would tend to incriminate them. As a result, NTSB reports go easy

The NTSB excludes family members from its accident investigations.  But it allows those who may have caused or contributed to a crash to participate.  That’s an obvious conflict of interest.  As a result, NTSB probable cause findings are not always impartial.  Instead, they tend to favor the industry players.  Reno-Tahoe International

The industry players have long argued that, while they

There’s not a lot of air traffic at night. So some air traffic control towers close altogether.  Any landing aircraft is on its own.  Other air traffic control towers are staffed with just one controller.  Not surprisingly, lone controllers working the night shift tend to doze off. 

That little secret is now out. That led

I often write about the NTSB’s "party system." That’s the NTSB’s practice of asking airlines and manufacturers for help in determining an accident’s cause.  If you ask me, it’s a bit like asking the fox for help in figuring out what happened to the chickens. The party system allows industry participants to bias NTSB probable cause findings in their

 In 1996, a ValuJet MD-80 went down in the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 on board.  The cause of the crash was ultimately traced to oxygen generators, which had been removed from service and improperly secured and loaded into the plane’s cargo hold. 

The FBI became involved early on. Various players were charged with, among other

According to the NTSB, most aviation accidents are caused by pilot error. But avNTSB Investigates for Probable Causeiation lawyers know that as many as half the cases that the NSTB says were the result of "pilot error" simply weren’t.

The NTSB does its best to get an accident’s probable cause right. The trouble is that, in almost every one of

Many think that, after it completes an investigation, the NTSB can order a stop to the dangerous practice that it determined was the cause of the aviation accident.  Not so.  The NTSB has no regulatory power at all. The only thing the NTSB can do after an investigation is make a safety recommendation and hope that the FAA