Amid changes to the format of its annual “most wanted” list, the NTSB has included improvement in general aviation safety as one of its hot-button topics. In the past, the Safety Board had used the list as a sort of scorecard, keeping track of the progress of its specific outstanding safety recommendations, which would remain in the list until they were resolved. That began to prove unwieldy as the number of open recommendations piled up. “Often those recommendations on an item stayed on the most wanted list for a long time,” said NTSB board member Earl Weener. “As you can well imagine, you can’t really have much in terms of priorities if you have almost 60 priorities.” As a result, the board this year decided to streamline its list down to the top 10 of what it identified as the most glaring needs in transportation safety.
By statute, the NTSB must investigate each of the approximately 1,500 GA accidents that occur each year, a number that, according to Weener, has remained virtually unchanged over the last 10 years. “If we look at GA statistics, there’s been no real improvement in the last decade in terms of accident rates, and if anything, it’s gone up slightly,” he told AIN.
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