I'd like to take the opportunity to recognize Bombardier's leadership because this seminar has grown as one of the premier events for disseminating safety information to pilots, mechanics, and managers of business jets and turboprops. It has been over a dozen years since Bombardier held the first standdown, and in a recession, everyone would probably understand if your management or your financial team, decided to skip a year. Your dollar commitment to the program demonstrates your priorities.

Many conferences I have attended this year have been under booked because companies don't have the funds to permit their staff to travel. I understand that the attendance this year remains high and there was a waiting list of over 200. So for all of you who are in audience this morning, your presence here in these tough economic times is an important indicator of your organization walking the walk, not just talking the talk about a commitment to safety.

We can only affect change through persuasion. The success of our recommendations is predicated on the quality of our investigations, the strength of our arguments, and the credibility of our perspective.

My challenge for you today is to determine how you can be a catalyst for change, to improve the safety of an already safe industry.

Voluntary action by industry to identify and address safety improvements has a direct impact on accident statistics. However, as important as the regulatory and businessn attitudes about safety are, perhaps most important component in reducing accidents in aviation is you, each individual sitting in this room and your own discipline. Personal discipline combined with the skill and knowledge based training, that you experience here in this seminar, can make a huge impact on safety. All too often in our investigations we see that it is the big and small decisions that pilots make when preparing for duty, performing as the monitoring pilot, following checklists, or responding to an unexpected event on the flight deck that define a successful or disastrous outcome.

While the overall aviation safety record in the U.S. is among the best in the world, the 2008 accident statistics revealed a mixed picture year-over-year. We were particularly concerned with the spike in fatalities in on-demand air charter operations.

Focusing on Part 135 on-demand flight operations, which include air medical, air taxi and air tour flights, last year, operators logged over 3.6 million flight hours and had 56 accidents, killing 66 people - representing the highest number of fatalities since 2000. That includes the 29 killed in helicopter emergency medical services, making 2008 the deadliest year for that aviation sector.

In general aviation, there were a total of 1,559 aircraft accidents, 275 of which were fatal, killing a total of 495 people -- one fewer than the previous year. Of those Part 91 accidents, 96 involved turbine-powered airplanes, 21 of which were fatal, killing a total of 38 people.

The Safety Board launched go-teams on several of these business jet accidents. One involved a business jet that impacted terrain during an attempted go-around at the Owatonna Regional Airport in Minnesota, killing all eight aboard. Our investigation is focused on the weather, the runway condition, aircraft systems and the flight crew's knowledge of those systems.

Last September I launched with our go team to an accident involving a business jet that overran a runway while departing Columbia, S.C. The two crewmembers and two passengers were fatally injured, and the other two passengers suffered serious injuries.

The beginning of the takeoff roll appeared normal, but after a tire blowout the airplane continued down the runway and beyond the threshold, through the perimeter fence, across a roadway, and onto an embankment. In this investigation the CVR and FDR coupled with the evidence on scene enabled us to focus in on the importance of appropriate tire pressure and knowledge regarding the use of thrust reversers and the air-ground logic in the aircraft.

Although the accident investigation is not complete, we've already issued six early recommendations regarding inadvertent thrust reverser stowage, which can occur when the requirements for deploying thrust reversers are not fully met, such as when the air/ground sensor squat switch circuits are damaged. We recommended that manufacturers incorporate design changes into the aircraft that provide feedback to the crew in the cockpit and that crews be trained to recognize such an event. I will continue to push our staff to be a catalyst for change by issuing early recommendations. As soon as we have identified and documented a problem that affects safety, we have an obligation to act on it.

In July, we issued our findings from a third business jet accident that occurred last year, which crashed about two minutes after takeoff from Wiley Post Airport in Oklahoma City. Two pilots and three passengers were killed. We determined that the probable cause was structural damage to the airplane's wing sustained during impact with one or more American white pelicans.

Aside from the bird strike issue, the Safety Board documented that the company operating the accident flight did so contrary to its Part 135 operating certificate, which, at the time, did not authorize operation of the accident airplane or any other fixed-wing aircraft. Even though it did not relate to the cause, the Safety Board addressed this issue in our report because neither of the pilots were trained or qualified to, nor was the airplane maintained to the Part 135 standards.

In January, the NTSB issued a recommendation to the FAA asking them to develop a safety alert to encourage all Part 91 business operators to adopt a Safety Management System (SMS). This recommendation was prompted by the investigation of a business airplane that crashed into a residential area near Sanford, FL, following an in-flight fire.

The Safety Board determined that the probable causes of the accident were the actions and decisions by the corporate aviation division's management and maintenance personnel to allow the airplane to be released for flight with a known and unresolved discrepancy, and the accident pilots' decision to operate the airplane with that known discrepancy, a discrepancy that likely resulted in an in-flight fire.

The NTSB is in the business of looking at how things could have been prevented, and while hindsight is 20/20 - SMS provides an opportunity for high performing companies to constantly evaluate their performance and establish an organizational commitment to safety. Given how effective an SMS would likely have been in the Sanford accident, those corporate flight departments without one should study the lessons learned in the investigation and ask themselves if they can justify operating without one.

One item on our Most Wanted List of Safety Improvements is to promote improvements in crew resource management (CRM), by requiring CRM training for on-demand air taxi flight crews. The Safety Board has investigated several fatal accidents involving Part 135 on-demand operators in which the carrier either had not implemented a CRM program or the program was much less comprehensive and effective than would be required for a Part 121 carrier. Effective CRM programs might have interrupted the chain of events that led to the accidents.

Another item on our MWL involves reducing accidents caused by human fatigue by setting work hour limits for flight crews, aviation mechanics and air traffic controllers based on fatigue research, circadian rhythms, and sleep and rest requirements.

Fatigue has been a factor in several Part 121 air carrier accidents investigated by the Safety Board during my tenure, and I expect that everyone in this room can share with me their own personal fatigue experience.

And although the fatal Colgan accident in Buffalo, NY remains under investigation, I believe that the NTSB's public hearing served as a catalyst by bringing fatigue in aviation to the forefront of the public's consciousness, including a discussion of the effects of commuting.

It probably comes as no surprise to you that fatigue has been on our MWL since its inception and that it continues to be a significant factor in many transportation accidents in all modes.

I would like to take this opportunity to recognize that the FAA, under Administrator Randy Babbitt's leadership, was a catalyst for change when they convened a quick fuse Aviation Rulemaking Committee on pilot hours of service. In my experience these (advisory) groups have traditionally accomplished their work over a number a years, not days... I am hopeful that the time has come to see a real change in fatigue.