{"id":12528,"date":"2019-04-09T18:27:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T18:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/?p=12528"},"modified":"2019-04-09T18:29:09","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T18:29:09","slug":"chairman-sumwalt-tells-aero-club-few-people-understand-what-the-ntsb-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/state-news\/district-of-columbia\/chairman-sumwalt-tells-aero-club-few-people-understand-what-the-ntsb-does\/%20","title":{"rendered":"Chairman Sumwalt Tells Aero Club \u2013 Few People Understand What the NTSB Does"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photos and Article by Michael J. Schoen<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The National Transportation Safety Board\u2019s (NTSB) role is\nnot well understood by the public. And this problem isn\u2019t limited to\ninternational accident investigations, like the two fatal crashes of Boeing\u2019s\n737 MAX.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

That was part of NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt\u2019s message to attendees at the April 5th<\/sup> luncheon of the Aero Club of Washington. The Chairman preceded his remarks with a short video that summarized the NTSB as an independent Federal agency, charged by Congress with investigating<\/em> every civil aviation accident in the United States<\/em>, as well as significant accidents in other modes of transportation \u2013 railroad, highway, marine, and pipeline. The NTSB determines the probable cause of the accidents and issues safety recommendations aimed at preventing future accidents. These non-mandatory recommendations<\/em> are often issued to other Federal agencies \u2013 agencies that create regulations designed to keep transportation safe. The Chairman underscored this point by noting that the NTSB investigates<\/em> \u2013 but it\u2019s the Department of Transportation (DOT) that actually regulates<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aviation is just one of the many forms of transportation\nregulated by DOT, an umbrella organization which oversees numerous other\nagencies, such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Sumwalt observed\nthat the FAA is doing a great job of keeping commercial air transportation\nsafe. To illustrate, he noted that the worst fatal domestic accident in recent\nhistory involved a hot air balloon.<\/em> Commercial\naviation in the United States has come a very long way from the days when\ndomestic airliner crashes were commonplace. And those days are within the living\nmemory of most adults in this country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sumwalt provided remarks at the April 5th luncheon of the Aero Club of Washington.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yet it is perhaps because commercial aviation has become so\nsafe that the public has so little idea of what the NTSB does. Chairman Sumwalt\nexplained that the International Civil Aviation Organization\u2019s (ICAO) Annex 13<\/em> gives the role of crash\ninvestigator to the country in which the accident occurred. As a result, there\nare times when the NTSB does not have a right to participate in these\ninvestigations \u2013 much less lead them. However, in the case of foreign accidents,\nthe agency may be entitled to appoint a representative<\/em>\nto the investigation when, for example, the crash involved an aircraft\nmanufactured in the United States. When the agency participates in an\ninvestigation, it will often select technical advisers to provide assistance.\nAnd these advisers are typically employees of the FAA, and the aircraft manufacturer<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chairman emphasized that, despite the public outcry for\nimmediate answers, proper investigations take time. He went on to explain that U.S.\nfederal law actually prohibits the NTSB from releasing information on a foreign\ninvestigation, unless the \u201ccountry of occurrence\u201d authorized the release. Partially\nas a result of this information vacuum, the Chairman noted that television\npundits seldom know what they\u2019re talking about, and frequently make baseless\nspeculations. Similarly, he noted that preliminary\nreports, <\/em>such as the one issued yesterday by Ethiopia\u2019s Transportation\nMinistry, can and often do <\/em>change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That being said, the NTSB\u2019s role as \u201cinvestigator\u201d involves\nhelping to gather and validate data, so that the regulator can then make a\ndecision. The Chairman underlined this point by noting that the FAA grounded\nthe MAX \u2013 not the NTSB. However, that decision came after the NTSB and Boeing\nanalyzed data gathered from Aireon, a global-aircraft tracking company. The\nresult of that data analysis \u2013 a process which took time to perform properly, <\/em>said the Chairman \u2013 resulted\nin the FAA\u2019s ultimate decision to ground the MAX. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chairman Sumwalt is a commercial pilot with more than 14,000\nlogged hours and veteran safety consultant to the National Aeronautics and\nSpace Administration (NASA). During his speech he mentioned that Boeing had\nprovided the NTSB with a technical advisor, and had also assisted in the data\nanalysis that led to the MAX\u2019s grounding. The implication seemed to be that the\nNTSB does not necessarily disagree with the FAA\u2019s decision to delegate certain\nresponsibilities to Boeing, during the MAX\u2019s certification process.\nNonetheless, when a member of the audience asked if the NTSB will be looking\ninto that delegation process, the Chairman replied with an unequivocal \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout his remarks, Sumwalt found opportunities to praise the NTSB and its personnel. His general theme was that the agency is staffed by great people who do great work \u2013 and are always looking for ways to do things even better, and more efficiently. But to close his speech, the Chairman chose to address a topic entirely unrelated to the MAX, or even aviation. He played a poignant two-minute video to raise awareness of the dangers of distracted-driving. He then warned the audience: if you\u2019re talking hands free, you might kill someone. There\u2019s no statistical difference between talking on the phone, and talking hands free. Both methods create equal amounts of cognitive distraction. \u201cSo please,\u201d he said, \u201cwhen you\u2019re driving, stay off the damn phone!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photos and Article by Michael J. Schoen The National Transportation Safety Board\u2019s (NTSB) role is not well understood by the public. And this problem isn\u2019t limited to international accident investigations, like the two fatal crashes of Boeing\u2019s 737 MAX.  That was part of NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt\u2019s message to attendees at the April 5th luncheon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12550,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-district-of-columbia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSCN8723edit.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12528"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12557,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12528\/revisions\/12557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}