(InvestigateTV) — From red flags reported by air traffic controllers and pilots that went ignored to on-site crash investigations handed off by the NTSB to another agency with oversight issues, Joce Sterman investigates major problems in aviation that could put safety at risk.
By examining decades of government reports, accident data, and confidential safety logs, a picture emerges of a system under immense strain, where the lessons from past tragedies are not always enough to prevent future ones.
Critical aviation safety improvements left in limbo for years over costs, competing priorities
When a plane crashes, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is tasked with the solemn duty of picking up the pieces to figure out what went wrong.
Their investigations are meant to be the foundation of a safer future, leading to recommendations that prevent the same mistakes from happening again. But a deep dive into these recommendations reveals a frustrating pattern of delays, disputes, and disregarded advice that has left hundreds of safety improvements unresolved, sometimes with deadly consequences.
Years of data show US air traffic control system ‘straining at the seams’
The strain on the American aviation system is perhaps most acute in the nation’s air traffic control towers. A combination of an aging, dated infrastructure and a critical shortage of controllers has created a high-stakes environment where the margin for error is dangerously thin.
The deadly crash at Reagan National Airport in January, which involved a mid-air collision between a military helicopter and a commercial flight, brought the long-simmering issue of controller shortages into the national spotlight. In the months that followed, a series of technology outages at major airports, including a 92-second blackout at Newark, further highlighted the system’s vulnerabilities.
“We can no longer kick the can down the road,” says one expert. “We need to sit and fix the problem.”
An analysis of NTSB reports since 2010 found at least 135 accidents or incidents where air traffic control was a contributing factor, including at least 40 where people were killed. But these official investigations only tell part of the story.
A review of the confidential Aviation Safety Reporting System, where pilots and controllers can log safety concerns, reveals a system pushed to its limits.
In the last 15 years, more than 18,000 reports have been filed involving air traffic control.
Independence of NTSB aviation investigations questioned over reliance on outside help
The National Transportation Safety Board was created by Congress to be a truly independent investigator, deliberately separate from the FAA and other regulatory bodies.
It is charged with investigating every single aviation accident in America. But a critical analysis of the agency’s own records reveals a startling fact: due to budget and staffing constraints, the NTSB is often missing in action from the most crucial part of an investigation—the on-scene response.
When a private plane carrying prominent attorney Steve Barnes and his niece crashed near Buffalo in 2020, his longtime love, Ellen Sturm, was devastated. Her grief was compounded by a sense of confusion and frustration when she learned that the NTSB, the agency in charge of the investigation, never actually came to the crash site. The on-scene duties were left to the FAA.
“It felt like nobody really cared enough to really, really look into what happened,” Sturm says.
Her experience is not an anomaly. An analysis of NTSB accident reports since 2015 found that, on average, the agency’s investigators did not respond on-scene to at least 21% of fatal aircraft crashes each year.
In these cases, they rely on the FAA to be their eyes and ears on the ground, a collaboration that critics say is a conflict of interest and undermines the NTSB’s independence.