Before his retirement on June 30, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt shares insights into some key things that would make the aviation industry safer—and how to do it.

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Rush transcript:

Lee Ann Shay:

Welcome to the Check 6 podcast. I'm Lee Ann Shay Aviation Week's executive editor for MRO and business aviation. And joining me today from Washington is a special guest Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transport Safety Board. Robert has been a board member for nearly 15 years, and prior to that, he had a 32-year career as a pilot. The bulk of which was flying for U.S. Airways. Robert, which is where I met you when you were flying 737s. Welcome, Robert. It's great to have you on this podcast.

Robert Sumwalt:

Lee Ann, thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to be with you.

Lee Ann Shay:

Great to have you. And so let's kick it off with talking about accidents, which makes sense. Is there one accident that you think was the most consequential for aviation safety during your 10 years at the board? And if so, why?

Robert Sumwalt:

I do think so. I joined the board in 2006 and I'm about to leave at the end of June. So I will have been there, oh, just about seven weeks shy of 15 years. And in those 15 years, I would say by far the Colgan Air crash was the most earth shattering accident in terms of being able to change things in the industry. There were massive changes that resulted from that. Now to refresh your listeners’ memories, Colgan Air was a Bombardier Dash 8 that crashed on approach to Buffalo, New York in February of 2009. The board’s investigation of course was extensive. We issued 25 safety recommendations and as a result of that crash legislation was written and passed into law. And now fundamentally the way that pilots are selected has changed. Now there's the introduction of the pilot records database, so that a prospective employer can really look at the fine details of that pilot’s prior experiences.

The qualifications for being an airline pilot have now been raised substantially. It used to be, you had to have at least 250 hours to be hired. Now it's up to 1,500 hours with a few exceptions. The way that pilots are trained and maintain proficiency has changed. There was new fatigue regulations, or I should say flight and duty time regulations, that were changed under the Federal Aviation Regulations, that would be part 117, a specific training for monitoring and cross-checking to teach pilots to make sure they're monitoring the flight path of the aircraft. And there's also been simulator fidelity requirements that have been increased. So I think that that was a watershed accident in terms of the impact that it had in terms of increasing the level of safety. That's not to say that the other crashes that we've investigated weren't significant, each accident is significant, but I think by far the Colgan Air crash had the most profound effect on commercial aviation safety in the United States.

Lee Ann Shay:

Thanks Robert and another accident has gotten a lot of attention was the recent MAX ones. It's been more than 18 months since the NTSB issued recommendations to improve the understanding of pilot aircraft interfaces based in part by those two 737 MAX accidents. What have you seen in terms of response by the FAA and the industry? And is it sufficient in your opinion?

Robert Sumwalt:

Well, you're right, Lee Ann, we did issue seven recommendations stemming from the two MAX crashes and the long and the short of it is, is that we found that the way that the two accident pilots or the two pilots in each of the two accidents did not respond the way that Boeing anticipated that the pilots would perform. And so we have recommended among other things that the certification standards make sure that the manufacturer is truly replicating the anticipated response of a flight crew. We issued those recommendations in September of 2019, and each of those recommendations has been classified by us. The FAA response is an acceptable response, but there's still more that needs to happen to complete those recommendations, to actually push them over the finish line. And that's what we're waiting to see. They've said that fundamentally they agree with us. Now, we want to actually see the action.

Lee Ann Shay:

And the NTSB has long called for the installation of cockpit image recorders. In addition to the standard flight data recorders and the cockpit voice recorders, and that could have been helpful in the recent accident investigations. As a pilot you understand the controversy around those image recorders. How can this concern be overcome?

Robert Sumwalt:

It's a great question, Lee Ann. And certainly as an airline pilot, I was, as you pointed out, I was an airline pilot for many years, 24 years. I do understand the desire for privacy protections. I also understand that when we or other accident investigation authorities are trying to understand what happened in the moments leading up to the crash, sometimes we don't have that information. So from an accident investigation and safety perspective, we believe that it could facilitate our investigations. As far as the fear that pilots might have, yes, I understand that. It's a federal law in the United States that the NTSB cannot, we cannot release the video or even the cockpit voice recorder, the actual recordings, we are prohibited from releasing those. So I think that those protections here in the U.S. will go a long way, but I do understand the concerns there.

Lee Ann Shay:

So given that protection, what's the holdup? Why aren't those image recorders going forward?

Robert Sumwalt:

Well, and that's a great question. It's the FAA, we've issued those recommendations to the FAA. The FAA has not agreed with us on that point and we will continue to push for those recommendations to be implemented.

Lee Ann Shay:

So I guess we'll stay tune. On another topic, NOTAMs can be excessive and they can be outdated and they can just be playing difficult for pilots to find the most important information that they need. Robert, what is being done to change this? And what would you like to see?

Robert Sumwalt:

Well, the long and the short of it is Lee Ann, we'd like to see the NOTAMs simplified. And as you know, there was a near disaster a few years ago at San Francisco when an Air Canada Airbus 320 almost landed on a taxiway that was occupied by four or five other airplanes awaiting to depart. There was information buried on page eight about one of the runways being closed. And I know from being a pilot, you skim those NOTAMs and a lot of them are just as I've been quoted as saying "garbage." There are things that have no applicability to your flight. It might say that an antenna, 150 feet tall, that is seven miles from the airport, does not have an obstruction light on it. Hopefully I would not be at 150 feet above ground seven miles from the airport.

Robert Sumwalt:

I understand that the FAA needs to put things like that out there to cover themselves, but we want the most relevant information, the most pertinent information to be readily available to the pilots. And these NOTAMs are written in somewhat of a Greek format. They're very difficult to discern, and you're trying to read seven or eight pages of NOTAMs and trying to get a plane out on time. And so we do think that there's a lot of room for improvement there. We're hoping that the FAA will act and I believe they too share this concern.

Lee Ann Shay:

Well, it sounds like a simplified system would benefit everybody.

Robert Sumwalt:

I agree with that.

Lee Ann Shay:

And speaking of systems, the NTSB has recommended SMS, safety management systems, repeatedly. What will it take to get more companies on board?

Robert Sumwalt:

Well, that's a great question. And we do believe that there are great enhancements to safety that can occur if people properly manage safety. And when you think about it, that's really what SMS is. It's a business approach to managing safety and people they pay attention to the things that are important to them. If you're in the business to make money, you would have a chief financial officer more than likely. And there would be a certain protocols that you would follow. You would have internal audits, you would have external audits, you would follow our standards for accounting, and you would do a lot of things. And you would do those things because finances would be important to you. So my feeling is if safety is important, you should be managing it, managing safety in a similar fashion.

Robert Sumwalt:

And that's really what SMS is. It's a business approach to managing safety. In fact, most operators I think are doing most of the things of SMS. It's just a matter of packaging at all within the confines of SMS. I mean I didn't really know what SMS was when I came to the NTSB. I went back to the business aviation department that I was running because before the board, I had to do a presentation on SMS. And I said, "Hey, Rick, what is SMS?" He said, "Boss, it's the things we were doing all along, we just didn't call it SMS." So to answer your question, I think people need to understand that it's not rocket science. We're just trying to do things that we're probably doing, which would be making sure that we have good policies and procedures, and that we're following those procedures.

Robert Sumwalt:

We want to make sure that we are adequately managing our risk. There's got to be a way of feedback that you manage your risk, and then you want to make sure that your controls on the risk are properly mitigating that risk. And there's got to be a safety promotion aspect of that. Not just lip service to safety, but actually making sure that you truly are valuing safety and people need to understand that it is scalable. Can it operate? Can it survive in a one person operation? Yes, I think so. And so that's what we want people to understand is that it is scalable. If you have one airplane, two airplanes or 200 airplanes on SMS can work.

Lee Ann Shay:

Well, that's really good practical advice, thanks. So I guess the big note there is it's scalable and it's not so difficult so people should forge ahead.

Robert Sumwalt:

That's right. And I think the thing that we don't want is just there to be a box checking exercise to say, I have SMS. And I heard somebody who once to tell me that it shouldn't be something that we have, SMS should be something that we do. And I liked that right there. We don't want to just have it. We want to do it, and we want to live it.

Lee Ann Shay:

More advice. I like that too. Switching gears a little bit, let's jump forward. I realized that advanced air mobility is a future technology, is something up and coming. So you haven't had to investigate an accident, thankfully. But as we look at advanced air mobility and other new technologies, what advice do you have from a safety standpoint? As we start thinking about these new up-and-coming things.

Robert Sumwalt:

Yeah. It's exciting to see what's going on there in the air mobility arena. And I think it's going to be here sooner than many people expect. As you pointed out, it's not really in the arena of the NTSB, because we really are by statute, we are an accident investigation agency. And as you pointed out, we've not had an accident in this particular sector yet. But my personal feeling is that it's very important that the regulator do two things. First. I think it's important when I speak about the regulator in this case, in the United States, of course, that would be the Federal Aviation Administration. It's important that the regulatory authority does not stifle the innovation, but on the other hand, it's important that the regulator do their job and make sure that when this technology is being introduced, it is being done properly for the sake of the people who are the occupants of the aircraft, but also for the safety of those people on the ground.

Robert Sumwalt:

If we have these things dropping out of the sky and falling on people's houses and cars and people, pedestrians, it won't be a good thing at all. So the regulator is going to have to really balance not being overburdensome and making sure that they are putting in place performance-based regulations instead of prescriptive regulations because they need to stimulate this technology, but they still have the job to make sure that whatever is being done, is being done properly. So that would be my personal advice on that one.

Lee Ann Shay:

More good advice. Thank you. Well, Robert, thank you so much for sharing your insights and thank you for the very many, many contributions that you have made to improve aviation safety. I think I'm still in denial that you retired from the NTSB at the end of this month, but I do wish you the very best.

Robert Sumwalt:

Lee Ann, thank you again for having me. And I think I'm in denial as well, but July 1st will come along and there'll be a, I'm wondering what's on the agenda after that, but I've loved working for the board. We have a very important mission and really good people, really fine people that work there. So I'll miss it greatly.

Lee Ann Shay:

And they'll miss you to,. I'm sure. Well, hey, Robert, that's a wrap for this Check 6 podcast, which will be available for download on iTunes, Stitcher, Google play, and Spotify. And thank you to our London-based producer, Guy Ferneyhough.