National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Deborah Hersman says the Safety Board will continue to press the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on implementing safety recommendations issued as the result of NTSB accident investigations.

Stated the 12th chairman of the Safety Board: “I will push the recipients of our safety recommendation letters to raise the bar of their own accountability. We simply cannot accept, ‘We’re working on it,’ as a satisfactory response from a regulating agency or an operator regarding an identified safety risk. We will expect the implementation of corrective action and we will expect the risk to be mitigated or, at the very least, the articulation of a clear forecast of when corrective action will be completed.

“I have been encouraged by new FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt’s recent efforts to act quickly on safety problems. In August he convened an ARC charged with providing recommendations on fatigue. This is an issue that has been on our Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements since its inception. We have seen some negotiated rulemaking activities last for two, three or even 10 years. His quick turnaround time for the ARC was impressive – now we await some real changes to the rules.

“Furthermore, just a couple of weeks ago, the FAA announced changes to the airspace around New York City, following the mid-air collision over the Hudson River last month. The NTSB will analyze those actions to see how they track with our recommendations,” Hersman said at an Aero Club luncheon.

Hersman said the Safety Board lives by three attributes: transparency, accountability and integrity.

Earlier this year, 50 people lost their lives when a Colgan Air Bombardier Dash-8 Q400, operating as Continental Connection Flight 3407, crashed near Buffalo, NY. The NTSB held a public hearing regarding that accident in May, less than three months after the accident.

“As a publicly-funded agency, the NTSB embraces transparency and the public’s right to know about our investigations. While we won’t issue our report until early next year, I believe that holding the hearing so early in the investigation allowed the Safety Board to identify relevant issues for the aviation community and dispel some inaccurate theories about the cause of the accident that may have been developing.

“In addition to furthering our investigation, one of the purposes of our public hearings is to show the public that the Safety Board is conducting an independent and thorough inquiry, it is from that transparency that we derive our ability to influence decisions that follow an accident,” she believes.

“If the NTSB, as the country’s transportation accident investigation agency, does not provide credible information in a developing accident investigation scenario, other sources will fill the void — and in most cases, it will be with unreliable, unverified, wrong information.

“You may recall the speculation about icing in the days after the Buffalo accident. Although we have not yet reported the probable cause of that accident, we know that airframe icing had little, if any, effect on the performance of that aircraft,” added Hersman.

Regarding another high-profile fatal accident---the mid-air collision of a Piper Saratoga and a tour helicopter over New York City---Hersman said “our purpose at an NTSB press briefing is not to provide the media with details to determine the cause of the accident, but to demonstrate to the public that the process of the safety investigation is being conducted in a professional manner.

“This is at the root of the recent controversy involving a party’s participation in our investigation of the Hudson River midair collision. That party (the National Air Traffic Controllers Association), as did all parties to our investigation, signed an agreement stipulating that the NTSB would be the sole source of information regarding the investigation.

“Yet, in the days following the accident, that party’s representatives conducted public press conferences regarding details of the ongoing investigation. A week after the accident, the NTSB took the unusual step of removing the organization as a party to the investigation. Although we regretted having to take that action, we believe that an investigation works more efficiently and successfully when the parties adhere to a disciplined approach,” Hersman believes.

The NTSB investigates about 1,600 aviation accidents per year. As of mid-September, the Safety Board has probed almost 133,000 aviation accidents. In 2008, the NTSB responded to 28 air carrier events. In addition, it received 178 notifications of foreign accidents or serious incidents involving U.S. operators or products. As a result, NTSB Accredited Representative Teams traveled to 27 accidents in foreign countries, in order to assist local investigation authorities.

Meanwhile, the NTSB laboratory has experienced a steadily increasing workload over the past five years. Last year the lab processed over 350 cockpit voice and flight data recorders, along with digital cameras, video recordings, GPS navigation devices, cockpit displays, and engine monitoring devices. Lab support for foreign accident investigators accounts for nearly 30 % of the flight data and cockpit voice recorder volume.

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