Marion Blakey took over the National Transportation Safety Board as its ninth chairman just in time to enter the maelstrom surrounding last November’s crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in New York. Through frequent media briefings in the days following the accident, she helped allay the fears of an American public–still jittery over air travel–that the crash was caused by another terrorist attack.
Two weeks earlier, Blakey had presided over her first NTSB public meeting, at which time the board adopted a probable cause of the 1999 crash of American Airlines Flight 1420 in Little Rock, Ark. Fatigue was listed as a contributing factor, and it remains an area of interest to the former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). During National Sleep Awareness Week, she warned that operator fatigue remains a primary cause of serious transportation accidents throughout the country.