Transportation Safety Board: Hold pilots accountable to raise professionalism

The National Transportation Safety Board says holding pilots and air traffic controllers accountable for their mistakes will increase professionalism in their ranks.

The NTSB said improving the performance of pilots and controllers should be one of the nation’s 10 most important safety objectives in the coming year. The safety board, which is best known for investigating airplane crashes, began to more formally investigate pilot and controller errors last year.

With errors increasing and the firing of several controllers for sleeping on the job, the NTSB added their record of unprofessional behavior to its annual Most Wanted List of the top 10 critical changes needed to reduce transportation accidents and save lives.

“Accident after accident there is a very powerful message here,” said board member Robert L. Sumwalt. “When pilots and controllers depart from their training, procedures and best practices, safety margins erode, which can lead to tragedy.”

Sumwalt said the fact that 19 recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration dating to 2005 have not been resolved to the NTSB’s satisfaction indicated a need to “really put the spotlight on this.”

“There’s a lot of visibility” of lack of professionalism, he said. A Southwest Airlines “pilot is sitting there having a conversation with an open mike; there’s Northwest 188, where the pilots overflew Minneapolis-St. Paul; there’s Colgan Air, where the pilots were not paying attention. We’ve got air traffic controllers who are falling asleep. It’s a number of things that have brought this to a head.”