NTSB Conflicts of Interest in Airplane Crash Investigations

Introduction: The NTSB's Mandate and Independence

A plane crash — "whether a large commercial airliner or a tiny home-built ultralight" — sets into motion a flurry of events that almost always culminates with a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation (Hise 1999:1). "The men and women of the NTSB have a rare breed of government job," in that they are nonpartisan, non-law-enforcement authorities given the investigational power to find the cause — "often beginning with little more than a handful of crushed aluminum" — of almost every aviation crash they investigate, and to issue a formal report (Hise 1999:1). These men and women are supposed to be noble fact-finders, neither interested in the airline industry's financial future, the bottom line of corporate America, nor even the feelings of the families and victims of a crash.

This is why the NTSB is officially unaffiliated with the current executive administration, whether Democratic or Republican. The NTSB is supposed to be beholden only to the truth — not even to the interests of the government. This is why it is not affiliated with the Justice Department. "The Safety Board does not investigate criminal activity; in the past, once it has been established that a transportation tragedy is, in fact, a criminal act, the FBI becomes the lead federal investigative body, with the NTSB providing any requested support" ("Investigations Involving Criminal Activity" 2007, NTSB). For example, during the 9/11 investigations, the NTSB's "studies provide the most detailed technical information available to date related to the hijackings, and the transcripts of the aircraft-to-ground communications" and were the "first complete government disclosure of each flight's air traffic control recordings," but were not affiliated with any prosecutorial procedures (Elias 2006).

Yet behind this idealism and the agency's noble credo come inevitable charges of bias. According to economist John Kenneth Galbraith, a government agency that "starts with good intentions in one generation is soon entirely composed of industry insiders by the third incarnation of its leadership" (Alvarez 1999:2). The NTSB is supposed to be "a uniquely independent organization" according to its official charter (Hise 1999:1). Critics argue that in practice, however, the agency has drifted far from that founding ideal.

Since several spectacular — and not-so-spectacular — airplane crashes in the 1990s, and even before the security concerns that came to dominate the airline industry after 2001, many families of crash victims have argued that the NTSB is no longer capable of adequately monitoring the industries it is supposed to police. They contend that recent crash investigations demonstrate that the NTSB is effectively "in bed" with the corporations it oversees. This is a serious concern given the stakes involved in aviation safety and the lives of the traveling public.

Origins of the NTSB and the Conflict-of-Interest Problem

The NTSB investigates "every single civil air crash, as well as major railway, marine, highway, and pipeline accidents" (Hise 1999:1). But given the risks and the often spectacularly public nature of airplane crashes, allegations of bias are more acute regarding air travel than any other industry the agency monitors. Unlike most other industries the NTSB oversees, airplane corporations are private entities responsible for generating profit and rehabilitating their public image after a crash — goals that may not always align with full transparency.

The NTSB was not always a fully independent body. The agency was originally affiliated with the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), but that board "was smeared with a little conflict of interest since the agency also wrote aviation regulations. Conceivably, the people who write the rules won't have much incentive to question whether or not those rules are working in the wake of an accident" (Hise 1999:1). The NTSB was created precisely to correct this structural problem by separating the rule-making function from the investigative function.

However, the problem of institutional capture did not disappear with the NTSB's creation. Critics allege that the agency "bends over backwards to keep a collegial atmosphere between it and the manufacturers, airlines, and suppliers it relies on" for evidence after a crash — partly out of convenience and partly because maintaining such a relationship is easier, though not necessarily more accurate (Alvarez 1999:2). This reliance often produces suspicious reports, or reports with glaring omissions. The structural dependence on the very entities being investigated creates a conflict of interest that no amount of formal independence can fully eliminate.

The United Airlines Flight 585 Case Study

A particularly troubling example of the NTSB's susceptibility to industry influence is the crash of United Airlines Flight 585. In March 1991, the Boeing 737 crashed near Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing all 25 people on board. The investigation received relatively little national media scrutiny, given the comparatively small number of casualties, but the conduct of the investigation raised serious red flags.

The NTSB narrowed the probable cause down to two factors: wind conditions or a rudder mechanism failure. Then, "a funny thing happened during the course of Boeing and United's examination of the plane's rudder system: key parts disappeared — for months" (Alvarez 1999:1). The NTSB accepted United Airlines' contention that the rudder had been destroyed in the crash. The missing parts were later, mysteriously, discovered at a United Airlines warehouse in San Francisco — far from the crash site (Alvarez 1999:1).

According to the NTSB, this was "an honest mistake," not a cover-up by United Airlines (Alvarez 1999:2). Boeing and United Airlines claimed that the airline had "discovered a 737 with rudder problems during a routine maintenance check" and did not inform the NTSB until it had conducted its own internal tests confirming the connection to the earlier crash (Alvarez 1999:2). While the NTSB publicly criticized the manufacturer and airline "for not being more forthcoming," the absence of meaningful public discipline toward either entity called into question the agency's dependence on profit-making corporations as its primary — and often sole — source of evidence.