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LOS ANGELES - In a surprisingly swift assessment, the operators of the commuter train involved in the head-on crash that killed at least 25 people blamed its engineer for the horrific accident. ADVERTISEMENT However, a National Transportation Safety Board member cautioned that it was too early to establish the cause of Friday's accident. Others, too, questioned the timing of the operator's move to affix culpability. Rescuers were still sifting through the twisted wreckage Saturday when Metrolink announced — 19 hours after the crash — that its preliminary investigation determined the engineer failed to heed a red signal light, leading to...

JUNCTION CITY, Calif. (CBS) ― Nine people are missing and feared dead in a helicopter crash in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said Wednesday. The crash happened Tuesday night as the helicopter was transporting firefighters battling a wildfire north of Junction City. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said the helicopter was carrying 11 firefighters and two crew members when it went down. Four people have been taken to the hospital with severe burns. Two of the survivors were in critical condition at the University of California Medical Center in Sacramento, Forest Service spokesman Mike Odle said Wednesday,...

Safety Group Urges Airbus Fixes LOS ANGELES -- U.S. aviation safety watchdogs, concerned about severe electrical problems that have blacked out cockpit displays on dozens of Airbus jetliners over the years, urged regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to mandate aircraft fixes and enhanced pilot training to alleviate such hazards. Recommendations released by the National Transportation Safety Board Wednesday cite 49 incidents over the years in which electrical problems caused various cockpit displays on widely-used Airbus A319 and A320 to suddenly stop functioning and temporarily go blank during flight. According to the board, seven of those incidents resulted in...

Train Blocks Chili Avenue by Rich Turner Published Mar 24, 2008 A disabled train has Chili Avenue blocked at the 3300 block, near Old Chili-Scottsville Road. The train hit a boulder on the tracks, causing

Old photos of the Interstate 35W bridge show two steel connecting plates were visibly bent as early as 2003 — four years before the span collapsed into the Mississippi River, killing 13 people. Minnesota Department of Transportation officials declined to say when the state first knew about the bending in the pieces of steel, called gusset plates. Two photos, part of a report issued earlier this month by the National Transportation Safety Board, reveal slight bends in gusset plates that hold beams together at two separate connecting points. The plates are in areas believed to be among the first points...

...Tonight's "The Final Report: Investigation of TWA Flight 800" on National Geographic Channel presents a brilliant, well-researched look into what the investigators found - and what they didn't find. The show details the animosity that existed from day one between the NTSB and the FBI. The NTSB is usually the final word in all air crashes. But because a number of eyewitnesses on the ground saw streaks flying towards the aircraft right before it exploded, and air traffic controllers reporting blips around the aircraft, the FBI came in and took over the investigation, calling it a possible crime. There were...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Two engines on the British Airways plane which crash landed at Heathrow "did not respond" to a demand for increased thrust about two miles from touchdown, an initial report by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch said Friday. The report describes the Boeing 777 hitting problems 600ft off the ground and descending rapidly but just making it onto Heathrow land The report says: "Initial indications from (crew) interviews and Flight Recorder analyses show the flight and approach to have progressed normally until the aircraft was established on late finals for Runway 27L. "At approximately 600ft and two...

A small plane that tried to turn back to the Kodiak airport just minutes after taking off for a short flight to Homer nose-dived into the harbor off the end of the runway Saturday afternoon, killing six people and injuring four, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board. Dean Andrew, a pilot in another aircraft who had been taxiing nearby, arrived in his floatplane just after the crash. He saw two people standing waist deep in water on the sunken fuselage and two others in the water nearby. He pulled all four aboard his plane

WASHINGTON - To help reduce the risk of fires, air travelers will no longer be able to pack loose lithium batteries in checked luggage beginning Jan. 1, the Transportation Department said Friday. Passengers can still check baggage with lithium batteries if they are installed in electronic devices, such as cameras, cell phones and laptop computers. If packed in plastic bags, batteries may be in carryon baggage. The limit is two batteries per passenger. The ban affects shipments of non-rechargeable lithium batteries, such as those made by Energizer Holdings Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co.'s Duracell brand. "Doing something as simple...

A. Scott Crossfield was flying through thick clouds 10,000 feet above rugged Georgia wilderness when turbulence began to batter his single-engine plane. The legendary test pilot, who, for a moment in history, was the fastest man alive, had cheated death many times. But not this time. An hour into a flight home from Alabama to Manassas Regional Airport, the Herndon resident plowed straight into an intense thunderstorm. He banked and tried to turn around. But it was too late. A. Scott Crossfield in 1953, the year he flew at twice the speed of sound, or Mach 2. The legendary test...

MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 8 — Investigators have found what may be a design flaw in the bridge that collapsed here a week ago, in the steel parts that connect girders, raising safety concerns for other bridges around the country, federal officials said on Wednesday. The Federal Highway Administration swiftly responded by urging all states to take extra care with how much weight they place on bridges of any design when sending construction crews to work on them. Crews were doing work on the deck of the Interstate 35W bridge here when it gave way, hurling rush-hour traffic into the Mississippi River...

Though inspections rate more than 70,000 bridges nationwide structurally deficient, a top transportation official Friday called the deadly failure of a Mississippi River bridge an "anomaly" and said motorists shouldn't fear for their safety. "I don't believe that they should be worried at all," National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark Rosenker said while visiting the bridge wreckage in Minneapolis. Rules in place for 30 years "have improved the conditions and the standards that in fact these things are being inspected on," he said. "But with that said, as a result of this catastrophic disaster, we're going to be looking at...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Federal investigators are looking into whether baggage handlers at the Syracuse airport caused a 12-inch hole in the fuselage of a Northwest Airlines passenger jet forced to make an emergency landing in Buffalo, N.Y., last month. The Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 1411 was just 20 minutes into its May 18 journey when the crew heard a loud pop. The Douglas DC-9 experienced a loss of cabin pressure and smoke filled the cockpit. The plane landed safely at the Buffalo airport. A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board does not assess blame or pinpoint the cause...

The crash that killed Cory Lidle, the Yankees pitcher, and his flight instructor in Manhattan on Oct. 11 was caused by “inadequate planning, judgment, and airmanship” by the two men, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded today. Mr. Lidle and his instructor, Tyler Stanger, could have safely completed their U-turn over the East River and avoided hitting an apartment building if they had either kept their turn very sharp from beginning to end, or given up on making it within legal limits, leveled the wings, maintained altitude, and flown over the buildings on the Manhattan side, board officials said. They...

ASHBURN, Va. - TWA Flight 800 burst into flames, broke into pieces and plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island, N.Y., in July 1996. All 230 passengers and crewmembers lost their lives. More than 10 years later, a large section of the fuselage has been reconstructed in a Loudoun County hangar at the National Transportation Safety Board's Training Center, a facility rented from GW's satellite campus here in Ashburn, Va. While so many lost their lives on that plane, its reconstruction now serves as an educational tool for students and professionals studying disaster. Most people are unaware of the...

NTSB Chairman Says all Passengers Should Have the Same Level of Safety Regardless of the Age of the Aircraft Washington, DC -- National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark V. Rosenker today addressed an aviation conference in California reiterating the agency's concern with aging aircraft. "We have investigated several accidents and incidents that have highlighted the safety implications resulting from aircraft aging and these accidents repeatedly demonstrate the importance of effective airworthiness programs throughout the service life of aircraft," Rosenker said. "With the proper maintenance program, these accidents involving aging aircraft could have been prevented." During his speech in Palm Springs,...

Before dawn on Sunday, August 27th past, Comair Flight 5191 carrying fifty passengers and crew crashed during takeoff, while attempting to depart on a runway one-half the length of the one it was cleared to use. The accident killed all aboard with the exception of the copilot, whose condition was recently upgraded to serious from critical. There is no question that the pilot of the Bombardier CRJ-100/200 (depending on the source) lined-up on the 3,500 ft. runway 26 rather than the 7,000 ft. runway 22. The CRJ-100/200 would normally require about a 5,000 ft takeoff roll. Evidence of tire marks...

LEXINGTON, Ky. - What is known is that a string of mistakes preceded the deadly crash of Comair Flight 5191, but what is less clear is which one was the crucial turning point. Was the problem the airport itself? The captain had to follow an unfamiliar taxi route that had been changed by a repaving project just a week earlier. Or, was it a decision by the tower manager to break the federal rule that two controllers should be working there at all times? Or even earlier, when the airport built intersecting runways rather than parallel ones? "It just breaks...

A family of General Electric engines widely used on Boeing Co. commercial jetliners and some Airbus planes should be inspected more than twice as often as federal regulators are requiring, the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday. The warning comes only a week after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered U.S. airlines to inspect the engines more frequently after one exploded on an American Airlines jet that was on the ground in June, sending a 50-pound piece of metal more than a half mile across Los Angeles International Airport. Had that engine explosion occurred in flight, the NTSB said, the plane...

Wal-Mart heir John Walton made major modifications to his experimental light aircraft in the weeks before he died, according to the final accident report released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board. The report did not give a probable cause for the June 27, 2005, accident that killed 58-year-old Walton. He died from blunt force trauma after crashing his single-engine CGS Hawk Arrow II aircraft while attempting to land at the Jackson Hole Airport in Jackson, Wyo. Walton had repaired the aircraft after a hard landing weeks earlier following a flight home from the builder in West Virginia, the...

Washington (DC) - Laptops get hot, but can they cause a plane to catch on fire? The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating whether laptop batteries caused a UPS cargo plane to catch on fire last February. The DC-8 plane with three crew members made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport after a fire broke out in the cargo hold. The fire continued to burn for four hours destroying the plane and most of the UPS packages inside. Luckily, the crew on board UPS flight 1307 escaped with only minor injuries. In the accident investigation, NTSB officials...

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Andy Krukar boarded TWA Flight 800 with a diamond ring in his pocket, planning to place it on his fiancee's finger at the Eiffel Tower during a weekend of romantic dinners and strolls through the streets of Paris. The fiancee, Julie Stuart, was going to follow him to Paris the next day to celebrate their formal engagement. AUDIO: TWA 800 Series Part One But Krukar was killed when Flight 800 exploded into a spectacular fireball over the Atlantic Ocean just minutes after taking off from Kennedy Airport — a disaster that claimed the lives...

A Massachusetts group has filed a lawsuit to force federal officials to release information about a piece of debris from Flight 800 that it hopes will show that a missile downed the plane. Federal investigators have dismissed that explanation as the cause of the 1996 explosion that killed all 230 people aboard. Instead they concluded that a spark ignited fuel tank vapors. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boston, demands that the National Transportation Safety Board respond to numerous freedom of information act requests made since 2004. Tom Stalcup, who heads the East Falmouth, Mass.-based Flight 800...

From August 1996 until October 1997, the FBI prefaced nearly every Flight 800 news update with the assertion that its agents were intensively scrutinizing the evidence to determine whether the initial explosion was a bomb, a missile or the result of a mechanical failure, specifically in the fuel tank. Six years of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI has now established that the most precise characterization of the explosion was provided by the victims themselves. Because the reports of many witnesses described a missile-like object rising from the surface, the FBI swarmed to Long Island and took...

Washington DC - With the 10th anniversary of the crash of TWA Flight 800 approaching, the National Transportation Safety Board today released a fact sheet that reviews lessons learned from the accident investigation and the progress toward ensuring that similar tragedies do not happen in the future. The Board's review found that significant safety improvements have been implemented over the past ten years, but that more needs to be done to avoid another accident like TWA 800. TWA 800, a Boeing 747, crashed on July 17, 1996, minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport on a flight to...

In the decade since TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island's South Shore, flying on commercial airlines has grown so much safer that the risk of dying in a plane crash has plunged to its lowest level in history. Improvements in technology and training -- and an added focus on safety spawned by Flight 800 in July 1996 and the ValuJet crash in Florida two months earlier -- have helped usher in an unprecedented period of air safety, experts say. In the past five years, the accident rate "has been brought to the brink of extinction," said Arnold Barnett, a...

SHIRLEY, N.Y. — A little past 8:30 p.m., as the blistering July sun melted in the west, a jumbo jet carrying students, honeymooners, businessmen and others to Paris exploded in a fireball, raining carnage into the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island. It had been only a dozen minutes since TWA Flight 800 took off from Kennedy Airport. Initially, investigators were not sure whether the calamity that killed all 230 people aboard the flight on July 17, 1996, was caused by a bomb, a missile or mechanical failure. Just two days before the start of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, it...

With the 10th anniversary of the crash of TWA Flight 800 approaching, last week the National Transportation Safety Board released a fact sheet that reviews lessons learned from the accident investigation... and the progress toward ensuring that similar tragedies do not happen in the future. The Board's review found that significant safety improvements have been implemented over the past ten years, but that more needs to be done to avoid another accident like TWA 800. "The crash of TWA 800 was a watershed event for the air carrier industry," said NTSB Acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker. "In the intervening years,...

A plane carrying four people in bad weather crashed Monday morning in a remote part of central Pennsylvania, killing the pilot and injuring the three passengers, officials said. The Piper Arrow was flying from Tennessee to Philipsburg, where it had been given clearance to land at 2:47 a.m., shortly before the crash, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Kaul Mitchell Wilson, 21, of Tennessee, was killed. The National Weather Service said visibility in the area had dropped about a half-hour before the crash. The three injured passengers, also from Tennessee, are Justin Hughes, 18; Fayez Abdel, 33; and Mohamed Abdel-Khalik,...

The Associated Press reports that New York junior Senator, Hillary Clinton, narrowly escaped injury when the aircraft that she was piloting was forced to make an emergency landing in southern New Jersey because of bad weather. National Transportation Safety Board officials have issued a preliminary determination that pilot error contributed to the accident, and that the Senator was flying the aircraft alone in IFR (instrument flight rating) conditions while only having obtained a VFR (visual flight rating) rating. The absence of a post-crash fire was likely due to insufficient fuel on board. No one on the ground was injured. The...

The deaths of 23 elderly Hurricane Rita evacuees in a horrific bus fire could have been prevented had the driver inspected the vehicle before leaving and known enough English to tell passengers where the emergency exits were, according to documents used to build a criminal case against him. Those documents also assert that the driver, Juan Robles Gutierrez, admitted to investigators that he tried to avoid police detection by switching the bus's license plates. The combination of all of these factors proved to be lethal," Dallas County sheriff's deputies wrote. "The driver's actions, had he been in compliance with the...

Learning from a disaster Sunday, February 05, 2006 Thomas W. Gerdel Plain Dealer Reporter At about 18 minutes after 8 o'clock on the evening of July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 rumbled down a runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The Boeing 747, with 212 passengers and crew of 18 headed for Paris, climbed into a clear sky to about 15,000 feet off Long Island, N.,Y. "Look at that crazy fuel flow indicator there on No. 4, see that?" said the captain. The time was 29 minutes after 8 o'clock. A minute-and-a-half later, the cockpit recorder captured sounds of...

Posted on Thu, Jan. 12, 2006 Unraveling the crash of Flight 11 BY ANDREA LORENZ Knight Ridder Newspapers KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Forty-three years ago a Boeing 707 passenger jet exploded in the air above the Missouri-Iowa border. The disaster took away 45 lives. In the aftermath it became clear those men and women died in an act of what might be called domestic terrorism. Although long forgotten in the community's memory, the tragedy of Continental Airlines Flight 11, bound for Kansas City from Chicago, left a significant legacy. For one thing, it led eventually to increased air travel security....

Hole found in Alaska plane 05:30 PM PST on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 KING5.com Investigators: Problems spike after ramp work outsourced SEATTLE – An Alaska Airlines plane was forced to return to Seattle Monday after a gash in the plane’s fuselage caused the aircraft to lose pressurization. The incident began when a ramp worker hit the plane with a baggage cart or baggage belt machine, according to National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Jim Struhsaker. The accident created a crease in the skin of the plane which opened up into a hole when the pressure on the plane changed at 26,000...

A 1940s-era seaplane that lost a wing during takeoff and crashed within sight of the beach, killing all 20 people aboard, had undetected cracks in its airframe that apparently caused the aircraft to break up, federal investigators said Wednesday. After the discovery was disclosed, Chalk's Ocean Airways voluntarily grounded its fleet of four planes for inspection. All four planes are the same model as the one that crashed. The cracks were found in the main support beam of a wing that fell off the seaplane shortly after it took off for the Bahamas on Monday. As salvage crews and divers...

Washington December 15, 2005 - The National Transportation Safety Board today released the following update on its investigation into the accident involving Southwest Airlines flight 1248, a Boeing 737-700 on December 8, 2005, at Midway Airport in Chicago, Illinois. The airplane overran runway 31C during the landing rollout. The accident occurred about 7:14 pm central standard time. The airplane departed the end of the runway, rolled through a blast fence, a perimeter fence, and onto a roadway. The airplane came to a stop after impacting two automobiles. One automobile occupant was fatally injured and another seriously injured. The flight was...

CHICAGO - A jetliner that skidded off a landing strip and into a city street needed about 800 more feet of runway to come to a safe stop, federal investigators said Thursday. The Southwest Airlines jet crushed a car, killing a 6-year-old boy, after it skidded off a 6,500-foot runway and crashed through a fence at Midway International Airport earlier this month. A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board shows the airplane touched down with about 4,500 feet of runway remaining, but snowy conditions and other factors meant the plane ideally needed about 5,300 feet of runway, according...

Heads up! Seconds From Disaster, TWA Flight 800 (2005) Documentary on National Geographic on now Channel 276 Direct TV

Little Rock, Ark. (AP) -- The National Transportation Safety Board says it will stand by a report blaming pilot error for a 1999 plane crash and likely will ignore a jury's decision to fault the airport. Jurors on Thursday awarded the widow of Capt. Richard Buschmann more than $2.1 million after her lawyers argued that conditions at the airport — not Buschmann's mistakes during an attempt to land in a severe thunderstorm — were the main cause of his death. Ten others also were killed. The NTSB said its conclusions were reached by aviation experts, as opposed to 11 random...

Just heard on KOA radio that a Cessna Citation crashed on approach to Pueblo Colorado, killing seven. They also mentioned that it was registered to Circuit City in Richmond VA. No other details at this time. It is bad weather along the front range today. This morning there was freezing rain/snow at my house near Colorado Springs, about 45 miles north of Pueblo.

Tragedy in Passaic County. A small plane carrying two people crashed in West Milford yesterday, killing both passengers. The Federal Aviation Administration says the Cessna 182 was attempting to take off from Greenwood Lake Airport when it crashed at the end of the runway. The four-seat, single-engine plane was quickly engulfed by flames and was destroyed. Authorities say the victims were 79-year-old Harold Botsford Junior, a flight instructor from Ringwood, and Ted Fletcher, a pilot from Franklin Lakes who was trying to refresh his license.

The corporate jet that crashed into a warehouse in Teterboro, N.J., last month with 11 people on board was carrying too much of its weight in front, federal investigators said in a preliminary report released yesterday. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is still investigating the crash, said that the plane's center of gravity was "well forward of the allowable limit." Tests on a flight simulator showed that the plane would not have been able to lift off at its normal takeoff speed with the balance of fuel, passengers and baggage it was carrying, according to the report.

It also covers some of the Clinton Administration. I recommended this book for all patriotic Americans to read.

The chairman of the nation's independent transportation safety agency said yesterday that she is concerned about the growing impact of outside lobbying and lawsuits on the organization's ability to investigate accidents fairly and quickly. Citing a contentious battle between American Airlines and Airbus SAS over the cause of the nation's most deadly airplane accident, the 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in Belle Harbor, N.Y., Ellen Engleman Conners said that repeated meetings of both parties with the National Transportation Safety board staff delayed the agency's final report. "The potential for contamination to the investigation exists," Conners said, although...

Three people were reported killed this afternoon when a small plane crashed at Centennial Airport in Arapahoe County, a week after a fatal crash at the same field. The twin-engine plane went down at about 3:20 p.m. Authorities at the scene said three people aboard the Cessna 421 were killed in the crash. A woman and two men were reported to have been aboard, said South Metro Fire Rescue spokesman Andy Lyon. A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said the plane apparently experienced a failure in one of its engines on takeoff and was trying to come back around to land...

Air traffic controllers warned the pilot of a private jet that the craft was flying too low two minutes before the plane crashed, killing its crew of three, investigators said Tuesday. The plane was en route to Houston early Monday to pick up former President Bush and take him to a conference in Ecuador where he was scheduled to deliver a speech. The 12-passenger plane clipped a light tower on the south Sam Houston Parkway and crashed into a nearby field, about 3 1/4 miles short of its Hobby Airport runway. Mark Rosenker, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety...

Some safety and privacy experts are reacting with apprehension, others with all out condemnation over a recent ruling by the National Transportation Safety Board to require electronic data recorders or "black boxes" in all new cars manufactured in the United States. "I take offense that this personal property of individuals is now being designed by the federal government," said Jim Harper, privacy attorney and editor of Privacilla.org. EDRs are certainly not new. Information gathered on black boxes — typically everything from speed, brake pressure, seat belt use and air bag deployment — has already been used in determining guilt in...

NTSB Identification: IAD05MA006 14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation Accident occurred Sunday, October 24, 2004 in Stuart, VA Aircraft: Beech 200, registration: N501RH Injuries: 10 Fatal. This is preliminary information, subject to change, and may contain errors. Any errors in this report will be corrected when the final report has been completed. On October 24, 2004, at 1235 eastern daylight time, a Beech 200 King Air, N501RH, operated by Hendrick Motorsports Incorporated, was destroyed when it collided with rising terrain during a missed approach to the Martinsville/Blue Ridge Airport (MTV), Martinsville, Virginia. The certificated airline transport pilot, certificated commercial copilot,...

Date/Time/Location October 26, 2004 9:30 a.m. NTSB Conference Center 429 L'Enfant Plaza, SW Washington, DC 20594 Aircraft Accident Report - In-Flight Separation of Vertical Stabilizer, American Airlines Flight 587, Airbus Industrie A300-605R, N14053, Belle Harbor, New York, November 12, 2001.

WASHINGTON - The co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 587 caused the November 2001 crash that claimed the lives of 265 people, the staff of the nation's airline safety agency reported Tuesday. Investigator Robert Benzon of the National Transportation Safety Board staff said the copilot's response to turbulence, just seconds after the Airbus A300-600 plane took off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, was "unnecessary and aggressive." Benzon also said that investigators found that American Airlines improperly trained its pilots to use the aircraft's rudder while recovering from upsets and said the problem could have been exacerbated by the...