AircraftOwner Online

A few weeks ago, I had one of the best experiences of my aviation life. As part of the annual conference of the National Transportation Safety Board Bar Association in Washington, DC, we got private tours of the NTSB laboratories. We were given access to the room where the only people to listen to the actual cockpit voice recordings after a fatal accident actually sit around and listen and create the transcript that is made public. We were shown the lab where Flight Data Recorder information is extracted from the black boxes recovered from accident scenes (they also take data from panel-mounted and handheld GPS receivers, engine monitors, and other electronics). We got to explore the structures laboratory where they examine large and small pieces of aircraft (and other modalities) for signs of what caused them to fail. We were taken to the animation labs, where the NTSB specialists design and create animations to demonstrate, for the Board and for the public, the last few minutes of a crash, and all of the relevant information from multiple sources, in an audio-visual presentation which is easy to understand.

The next day, we were taken by bus to the NTSB's accident investigation academy near Dulles Airport, where investigators from the US and from around the world are trained in the fine arts of accident investigation. This academy was built after the families of the victims of TWA flight 800 recognized the expertise of the investigators who worked tirelessly for years to determine the manner in which that aircraft came apart in a blaze over Long Island Sound. Thousands of pieces of the wreckage were recovered from the water and from the bottom of the Sound and were painstakingly reconstructed in a hangar at one of the old Grumman Aircraft plants. This reconstruction was then taken apart, moved to the academy, and carefully reconstructed there as a teaching aid for future investigators. The families approached Congress and asked for money to be allocated to develope an academy dedicated to this work so that others could learn from their tragedy. Out of respect for the victims and their families, the families control access to the reconstruction, and no photographs are allowed. We were very fortunate to have been able to get access to the reconstruction.

Words are simply inadequate to convey the sensations one experiences when the double doors open from a building hallway, and you come face-to-face with some 40% of a B-747 showing obvious signs of an explosion and of ripping apart, literally, at the seams. A climb up a tall staircase allows you to look into the fuselage from an area just behind the cockpit, each seat, in the condition in which it was found, placed exactly in the location it occupied right up until the aircraft came apart under those unfortunate passengers. It is like looking into a tomb, only without the bodies. To me at least there was an overwhelming feeling that this was where over 200 people died.

On the floor, dwarfed by the wreckage of the 747, are other aircraft fuselages, including a Cessna that suffered an in-flight fire. Although the instructor who showed us around took pains to show us the way that the smoke trails from the rivet holes indicated the initial point of origin of the fire, the chared interior of an aircraft type in which I had many hours of flying time was quite sobering. Engines, props, control cables, spinners, and other debris from numerous fatal accidents were on shelves around the room. For the professionals, they serve as instructional aids. For me, they served as a stark reminder of the consequences of mistakes.

Having now spent quite a bit of time with NTSB personnel, both in the field and at their offices and the academy, I am more than ever impressed with this small, independent government agency. No one that I met reminded me of a "typical government bureaucraft." Everyone with whom we came in contact was not only an expert in his or her field, but was clearly keenly aware of the seriousness of the mission of the agency. The entire NTSB -- Board Members, Judges, staff, investigators, and others -- numbers only about 400 people spread around the country, and ready at a moment's notice to assist other countries around the globe. They do more with less than just about any other government agency I can think of. As Americans, we can be proud that we have this agency to lead the world in pursuing safety in transportation. As passengers and pilots, we can and should also be thankful that we have this agency to search for causes, and to make safety recommendations in an effort to keep us all as safe as we can be.