NTSB Most Wanted

One of the national transportation safety board’s (NTSB) most wanted items that involve aviation is the ability to identify and communicate hazardous weather. General aviation (GA) has an extremely high crash rate, approximately 6.51 crashes per every 100,000 flight hours. And two thirds of GA accidents are fatal and are in Instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The NTSB has determined that the solutions to weather issues are pilot training and operations, the creation of weather information and advisories, and the collection and dissemination of weather information particularly by the NWS and the FAA. Pilots need to accurately be able to determine a go or no go decision. Another way to prevent accidents due to weather is to have ATC controllers provide weather data to pilot’s prior and during flight. The NTSB is continuing its research into GA accidents dealing with weather and exploring new options to help reduce those accidents. One of the ways the NTSB is helping is examining the utility of using LIDAR, which is a method of sensing atmospheric wind information by laser technology.

I feel that both of the two aviation related items on the NTSB’s most wanted list adequate enough to make the list. I would have like to seen an issue raised about aircraft landing at wrong airports but I do believe that GA accidents and Helicopter accidents are more important and have a higher volume of accidents.

As the NTSB raises these two subjects as safety issues I feel they will create new jobs to help come up with new and better ways of preventing these incidents. I potentially see training becoming stricter on pilots on aspects of identifying hazardous weather and understand the possible risks of that weather. I also see that weather being available to pilots in the aircraft to become more popular. Another way to help prevent accidents is to create or update the current service of more accurate weather reports that are available to pilots.