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. 
The industry players have long argued that, while they
Cirrus says Cory Lidle crashed because he was inexperienced, not because his controls locked up. But a surprise witness testified that Lidle had flown the East River Corridor successfully four times in the two months before the crash. According to a NY Daily News account, the witness related that Lidle talked with her about his
The Lidle jury will never learn that the NTSB concluded the crash was caused by pilot error, and not a defect in the plane, as plaintiffs allege.
The reason is that, by federal statute (49 USC 1441(e)), the NTSB’s conclusions are inadmissible in court.
No part of any report or reports of
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 av
iation 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
Most general aviation aircraft manufactured today come with "glass cockpits." Instead of being equipped with mechanical gauges and indicators, they are equipped with computer screens. The screens integrate and display all sorts of useful flight information. The information displayed may include satellite weather, synthetic vision, infrared vision, terrain awareness information, traffic
Continue Reading NTSB: Glass Cockpits Associated With Higher Rate of Fatal Accidents
The FAA has instituted new rules designed to keep sightseeing helicopters from colliding with airplanes that are transitioning the Hudson River Corridor near the Statue of Liberty. The San Francisco Daily Journal, California’s largest legal newspaper, published this column on how the new rules came to pass, and why they aren’t enough.