Trying to fix a deadly problem
The NTSB has become increasingly concerned about general aviation as crash and death rates have remained stagnant for 15 years while commercial crashes have practically ceased. In 2012, the NTSB elevated general-aviation safety to its annual list of “most wanted” improvements in transportation safety.
“That was a breakthrough,” the NTSB’s DeLisi said.
The NTSB, with a staff of 400, has focused since its creation in 1967 on hazards to the greatest number of people in aviation, rail transit, pipelines, waterways and roadways. The NTSB helps investigate 19 foreign airline crashes a year on average, including the recent disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Foreign investigations are “a particular challenge” because of the board’s domestic obligations, the NTSB wrote in a recent annual report.
In 2012, the NTSB said that in many general-aviation crashes “pilots did not have the adequate knowledge, skills or recurrent training to fly safely.” At the opening of the 2012 forum, Hersman, then the NTSB chairwoman, said, “GA pilots are not learning from the deadly mistakes of their brethren.”
The emphasis on pilots and pilot problems has steered the NTSB away from mechanical problems or ways to increase the chances of surviving a crash, some experts say.
“There is essentially no requirement that specific injury data be collected. They don’t even collect impact data, like angle (of the crash) or velocity,” said retired Army colonel Dennis Shanahan, former commander of the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory who has consulted for the NTSB.
“This has severely impeded researchers’ ability to find out what’s going on from an injury basis,” Shanahan added. “If you’re interested in a particular aircraft and you want to know what the injuries are, it can’t be done.”
Harry Robertson, an aviation-safety pioneer who developed stronger helicopter fuel tanks in the 1960s and is in the National Aviation Hall of Fame, said general-aviation deaths cannot be substantially reduced until the NTSB understands their cause.
“The most important thing they can do first is improve the quality of their investigations as to what it was that caused the injury and the death,” Robertson said.
And once causes are known, “engineers can step in and figure out the ways to assure an improvement in crashworthy capabilities. … Trying to improve crashworthiness is very hard if you don’t know what broke.”
The NTSB and its predecessor agencies have recognized for decades that general-aviation crashes are often mild enough for occupants to survive.
In 1980, the NTSB said, “General-aviation aircraft are unnecessarily lethal in crash situations which should be survivable.”
To reduce automotive deaths, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gathers data on what kills or injures people in crashes. The findings have led NHTSA to mandate a wide range of safety equipment that has reduced the number of deaths in motor vehicles to 21,667 in 2012 from 35,025 in 1988, even as the amount of driving increased 50%.
A 2002 report written for the Department of Transportation by Sue Baker, the Johns Hopkins expert, urged the NTSB to follow NHTSA’s approach and collect detailed information on a random sample of general-aviation crashes. That hasn’t been done.
Shanahan said the NTSB was interested when he was consulting there in 1989, but money was not available.
The NTSB has instead conducted in-depth studies on spe- cific general-aviation aircraft and flying conditions that are causing extensive crashes, such as homebuilt airplanes and medical helicopters. The studies have found causes and patterns that were not found during individual crash investigations and have led to safety recommendations and improvements.
But the NTSB safety recommendations come years or decades after a problem arises.
In May, an NTSB report noted “undue hazards and risks” of agricultural flights such as pilot fatigue and poor aircraft maintenance and urged safety improvements.
The report did not note that since 1982, 4,200 agricultural airplanes and helicopters had crashed, killing 394 people and injuring 1,224.
In two-thirds of the crashes, the NTSB blamed the pilot.