The Safety of the NTSB

Transportation safety is very important to the world in a numerous amount of ways. One way is the safety of innocent people who have no recollection of what's going on, and being caught in someone else's negligent acts. The two main aviation topics the NTSB include on their most wanted list that include aviation are, general aviation safety, and helicopter operations. For the sake of this blog I will be discussing the safety of general aviation in relation with this years NTSB's most wanted list. They would like to identify how hazardous weather has taken a toll on general aviation. A frequent cause or contributing factor to general aviation accidents is a failure to recognize or take appropriate steps to avoid hazardous weather. The NTSB investigated a total of 1,466 general aviation accidents in 2011, resulting in 444 deaths. By using teaching methods and redundancy of specific knowledge that should be aware by general aviation pilots would decrease the risk of people being injured or killed, and increase flight safety.


Out of all the other safety issues there are in the industry if I had to decide if these two topics were to make the list I would half way agree. Helicopter operations are important because it deals with safety and humans so of course it needs to be looked at. But at the same time learning to fly a helicopter has certain steps, procedures, and rules you must follow to become applicable enough to fly just like starting with a Cessna 172. No matter what career you want to pursue in aviation, you must start by abiding the FAR Part 91 which is GA, thus dealing with weather. Unfortunately not knowing how to read or understand certain weather patterns and signs can turn a good day into a bad one real fast. This makes flying in GA a big risk factor because if you do not no; storms, fronts, wind shifts, types of fog, icing conditions etc. You put your life in jeopardy along with your passengers and surrounding civilians.


With these new safety issues identified I believe there is a few potential job openings. First looking at hazardous weather. With fatalities occurring due to weather, possibly flight schools or flight instructors need to pay extra more attention in certain areas of weather. Especially for areas a new private pilot plans on flying around that sees a substantial change in the weather climate, such as Michigan. Not to many jobs come to mind for weather services, you can teach something to a student as much as you want, but if they don't want to get a grasp on something and learn it then they wont. Remember its always the pilots final word to go up and fly or not. As for helicopter jobs, with the accidents and fatalities numbers increasing, civil helicopter industries should look into more practice and flight time. This would result in more flight instructors.