National Transportation Safety Board

AuthorJeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 191

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is a federal investigatory board headquartered in Washington, D.C., whose mandate is to ensure safe public transportation. Established in 1966 as part of the DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, the NTSB investigates accidents, conducts studies, and makes recommendations to federal agencies and the transportation industry. It is chiefly known for its highly visible role in civil aviation accidents, which it has sole authority under federal law to investigate. Additionally, the NTSB probes certain marine accidents and accidents that occur in the use of railroads, highways, and pipelines. The five members of the board are appointed by the president.

The NTSB grew out of the long history of federal oversight of aviation. As early as 1926, Congress required the investigation of civil aviation crashes under the Air Commerce Act (Pub. L. No. 69-254, 44 Stat. 568). Over the next three decades, lawmakers created a maze of regulatory agencies, including the Civil Aeronautics Authority and the FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION (FAA). The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 (Pub. L. No. 85-726, 72 Stat. 731) gave duties for investigating accidents to the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), intending for the board to study aircraft and the actions of their pilots in the hopes of preventing future disasters.

As the airline industry grew, Congress reorganized its regulatory scheme. With passage of the Department of Transportation Act of 1966 (Pub. L. No. 89-670, 80 Stat. 935), lawmakers created the NTSB within the Department of Transportation and gave it the responsibilities formerly held by the CAB. However, the NTSB often ended up conducting investigations of the FAA. In 1974, in an attempt to avoid conflicts between agencies, Congress made the NTSB an independent board by passing the Independent Safety Board Act of 1974 (49 U.S.C.A. app. § 1901 [1982]). The act gave the NTSB sole responsibility for investigating airline crashes.

The investigatory powers of the NTSB are quite broad. Once its teams are dispatched to the site of an accident, they maintain exclusive control over the scene. Their authority includes seizing all evidence for examination, including an airline's flight recorder (the so-called "black box"). They can also bar other parties from their proceedings?an important element of autonomy given the inevitable litigation that follows airline accidents. In...

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