In July 2019, President Trump renominated Robert Sumwalt for another term as NTSB chairman. A few days after the hearing, the Senate Commerce Committee voted to send the nomination to the floor for a vote by the full Senate.
It was an otherwise mundane Tuesday morning in June 2006. I was at the airport office of our business aviation flight department when I got the call. When the White House calls, only the 202 area code pops up—not the full set of digits. I knew who it was and immediately grabbed it. On the other end of the line was Janae, an employee in the Office of Presidential Personnel (PPO).
“Hi Robert, how are you?” she asked. “I don’t know, Janae. You tell me how I’m doing,” I replied. There was a serious lump in my throat. I had been waiting for this call for weeks and did not know if she was calling with good news or bad. I had been sweating bullets that it would not be good.
“I’ve got good news,” came her reply. “This afternoon the president will make an announcement that he’s nominating you to be a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, and upon confirmation, designate you as vice chairman.” In total disbelief, I literally had to ask her to repeat what she said just to make sure I properly understood it.
Nine months earlier, my good friend Bill Weeks and I were at a reception and dinner in Washington. That is when he broached the idea that I needed to pursue my dream of being appointed to the NTSB. Bill and I go way back, starting in 1983 when we were part of the small team that introduced the Fokker F-28 into Piedmont Airlines’ fleet. We spent six weeks in Holland as sim partners, and then worked together to write the manuals, procedures and training program. We later did a good bit of safety work together for the airline. At the reception, Bill wrote on the back of a cocktail napkin a list of people we needed to talk to. A few days later, I called then-NTSB board member Debbie Hersman, who later became chairman, and asked her advice. She said I was a long shot and wished me good luck.
Long shot or not, one by one, I started getting support from people on Capitol Hill. I met with the transportation secretary and the deputy secretary. I met with the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over nominees for transportation-related positions. There were trips to Washington and there were phone calls and letters. I had a meeting with the director of the PPO. Throughout all of this, PPO is vetting other candidates, too. This became embarrassingly apparent when I was sitting in the waiting area outside a key senator’s office when one of the other potential nominees walked out.
By statute, NTSB has five board members, each of whom are presidential appointees with senate confirmation (PAS). The road to nomination and confirmation is an extremely arduous and painstaking process. I successfully navigated it on four occasions.
After all these meetings, phone calls and letters, in March 2006, I received a call from the director of PPO. “I’ve just left the Oval Office, and the president [George W. Bush] wants to move forward with your nomination to NTSB.” He mentioned something about a background investigation and then warned: “The quickest way to not get this job is for us to read somewhere that you think you have it.”
The fun now begins.
Background Checks
There are scores of forms and documents that need to be completed and signed. There is the SF-86, which is the application for a security clearance. A set of White House questions supplement that form, and then there is the extremely detailed and cumbersome financial disclosure form, the OGE-278. The questions on these forms are quite pointed and direct. Falsification can lead to fines and imprisonment. Fingerprints are taken.
And then—despite the warnings you have received to keep quiet—your neighbors and friends start getting calls and visits from a little organization called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Two of my neighbors freaked out when an FBI special agent showed up at their houses and started asking questions about me. They each then called me to make sure I was not about to go to jail.
The background investigation lasts around three months—possibly more. The NTSB’s ethics officer, meanwhile, must heavily scrutinize your financial disclosure form and other aspects of life to make sure there are no ethical conflicts. The director of the Office of Government Ethics must clear you before anything moves. You must sign an ethics agreement to attest that you will divest of any conflicting financial interests and organizations.
Despite all this angst, through all of this, I had finally received the call from Janae. I was about to be nominated. Now, I had to worry about the Senate.
By way of background, there are around 1,200 PAS positions in the U.S. government. These include cabinet officials, federal judges, heads of agencies such as FAA, NASA and NTSB. How exactly does someone get appointed as a member of the NTSB? The answer lies in Article II of the Constitution, which states that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States.”
In other words, the president nominates his or her choices for these high-level positions. The Senate then has the responsibility to conduct its own vetting and decide whether to confirm the nominee. Just like the televised testimony for Supreme Court nominees, NTSB nominees must undergo a Senate confirmation hearing, too. I have personally known four people who were nominated for the NTSB but did not get confirmed. You cannot take anything for granted.
One of the new board members was nominated back in 2022, but just recently confirmed. When he and the other nominee came for a Senate vote in December, one senator blocked both nominations—not because of their credentials, but simply because he had a vendetta against the Senate majority leader. After all, these are political appointees, and the process to get there is political in nature.
Two new members recently joined the board. This brings the board back to its full complement of five members for the first time in nearly five years. Furthermore, it has been down to just three members since I departed in mid-2021. The day after these new members were sworn in, the White House announced the president’s intent to renominate the current chair for another five-year term, including an additional three years as chair.
How To Get Nominated
How do you get the attention of the president to nominate you to one of these highly coveted positions? Good question. Basically, there are two types of people who are appointed—those with excellent transportation credentials, and those who have excellent political connections.
Whenever someone tells me they want to be an NTSB board member, the first question I ask is, “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?” While safety is nonpartisan, the statute states that no more than three of the members may be from the same political party. The party with the greatest number of seats is typically the same as the president’s party. For example, when we have a Democrat president, if you are a Republican and there are already two Republicans on the board, forget it for another four years.
The statute also requires that “at least three members shall be appointed on the basis of technical qualification, professional standing and demonstrated knowledge in accident reconstruction, safety engineering, human factors, transportation safety or transportation regulation.” When Jim Hall was nominated in 1993, the Washington Post commented on his heavy political background and coziness with influential politicians and quipped that Hall’s “only transportation experience apparently is a driver’s license.” Hall later rose to be NTSB chairman and proved to be a quick learner and an outstanding leader.
In the early 1990s I had the opportunity interview NTSB member John Lauber for a magazine. Dr. Lauber had very strong technical credentials, having done early research at NASA on crew interactions. He and his team came up with the notion of crew resource management. He was type-rated in a Boeing 727. Despite his strong technical qualifications, he made an excellent point: “I think it is important to have a board with people of diverse backgrounds because everybody brings a different point of view. Accidents are not just technical issues. They involve issues of state and government oversight, organizational practices, public policy, economic issues and legal issues. I think collectively we come up with much better decisions than if we were all aviation psychologists or all lawyers. I think the net result is one that has positive benefits for the traveling public.”
I first joined the board in 2006. During a swearing-in ceremony, I read a statement I had run across during the long and winding journey to being appointed to the NTSB. “Public service is one of the highest callings in the land. You have the opportunity to make a positive impact on families, communities, states and sometimes the world.”
I truly believe this statement applies so well to the work of the NTSB—and I was so honored to serve for 15 years.
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