Free Republic

According to federal transportation investigators, Tuesday's deadly plane crash in East Hartford was intentional.

Hawaii's former health director who died after a plane she was traveling in crashed into the ocean was wearing an infant life vest and the pilot didn't give a safety briefing before takeoff, according to details in a National Transportation Safety Board report. An autopsy determined Loretta Fuddy died of an irregular heartbeat from hyperventilating after she exited the plane, which landed in choppy water off the island of Molokai. The pilot and seven other passengers on the 2013 Makani Kai Air flight survived. Pilot Clyde Kawasaki reported to the NTSB that he heard a loud bang, followed by an...

All seven victims in the Silver Spring explosion are now accounted for, while the intense investigation into the deadly blast that destroyed an apartment building kicks into high gear. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the explosion at the apartment complex. Investigators have been on scene since last week. Seven bodies have since been recovered from the rubble. Police believe, unfortunately, some of those may belong to people still reported missing. Recovery and rescue efforts continue in Silver Spring. A week later, the rubble and debris is as prominent as ever in the deadly fire and explosion that shook...

The National Transportation Safety Board has released a preliminary report and photo concerning the first known fatality of a Tesla car using Autopilot. And it’s pretty gruesome. Earlier reports had stated the a Model S struck a big rig while traveling on a divided highway in central Florida, and speculated that the Tesla Autopilot system had failed to intervene in time to prevent the collision. The crash killed 40-year-old Ohio resident Joshua Brown, who was the driver of the Tesla. The driver of the truck was not injured.

What sent EgyptAir flight 804 plummeting into the Mediterranean Sea last month, remains a mystery. Egyptian investigators have failed to extract any information from the badly-damaged memory chips of the crucial black boxes. Defeated, Egypt is now sending both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder to the BEA in France for analysis. The BEA -- the French version of the NTSB -- are considered some the best in the world at analyzing this type of equipment. In a statement released on Thursday, EgyptAir said the French will "carry out repair and removal of salt accumulations." "Then (the...

A major disappointment announced today in the investigation into the El Faro sinking with the NTSB now saying that the wreck of the ship was discovered with the navigation bridge missing and no sign of the Voyage Data Recorder (VDR).

WASHINGTON -- Only about 1 in 5 defective tires is being removed from the road through the safety recall process, a federal accident investigations board said Tuesday. The recall system is "broken" because manufacturers are unable to contact most tire owners to warn them, according to a report from the National Transportation Safety Board. **SNIP** The problem is that there is no requirement for most tire dealers to register the tires they sell with the manufacturer, the board said. Most dealers don't take the time to do so, which makes it difficult for manufacturers to determine who owns the tires...

The Coast Guard will hold a joint press briefing with the National Transportation Safety Board to provide updated information on the search for the crew of El Faro and the investigation Wednesday afternoon.

Investigators examining last month's fatal crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia now believe they know whether the engineer was using his phone when the derailment happened, a source with knowledge of the probe said Wednesday. The source didn't reveal the National Transportation Safety Board investigators' conclusions. But the NTSB is expected to make an announcement about the crash at 9 a.m. ET Wednesday.

Investigators looking into last month’s deadly Amtrak derailment have found “no anomalies” in the tracks, signals or breaking systems of train #188, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board released Tuesday, underscoring the key outstanding question of their ongoing inquiry: Why did the locomotive speed into a sharp Philadelphia curve at 106 miles an hour? The NTSB said it is continuing its examination of engineer Brandon Bostian’s cell phone records. Bostian, who said he cannot recall the events shortly before the crash, reported to the NTSB that his phone was in a bag at the time...

Did an iPhone drive the Death Train? This speculative question must be asked, the what if factor must be assuaged, the horror of eight dead innocent people, the injuries of 200 innocent other passengers also must be expiated. A website that located and published the online links for very graphic, very obscene images of homosexual sex asks at the end of the piece this mind shattering question: “What do you trust more to control a train, an engineer or an iPhone?” Are the authorities who own and put up this site putting this theory out there for us to connect...

A passenger traveling along the same route the night that Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia told NBC News that an object hit his train, shattering the window. The account from Johns Hopkins student Justin Landis makes him the third person to report a projectile hitting a train Tuesday night in that area, and comes a day after the National Transportation Safety Board said investigators were working to determine whether something struck the doomed Amtrak train before it derailed. Eight people were killed and about 200 others were injured in the accident.

The FBI has been asked to investigate the possibility that the Amtrak train that crashed outside of Philadelphia was hit by a bullet or some other object. According to the The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an assistant conductor in the train’s café car claimed to have overheard a regional train engineer saying he had been “hit by a rock or shot at.”

The engineer in control of the Amtrak train that derailed on Tuesday, killing at least seven people, has no recollection of the moment the train crashed, his attorney has said. Brandon Bostian, of Queens, New York, has been as the driver of the commuter service that came off the tracks near Philadelphia, leaving 200 people hospitalized. On Wednesday, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators confirmed that the train had been traveling at 106 mph before it derailed at a curve on the tracks, where the speed limit is 50 mph. Bostian, who has been an engineer with Amtrak since 2009,...

Investigators did not speculate why an Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia Tuesday night, but they did say that the train was traveling at over twice the speed limit going into the curve where it derailed. The National Transportation Safety Board has concluded that the Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia late Tuesday night was traveling at 106 miles per hour into a sharp curve, more than twice the designated speed limit, causing it to derail, killing at least seven people and injuring 200 more. Full “engineer induced braking” occurred at that speed, and within seconds the train had derailed, according...

Rescuers were attempting to help a woman who fell from a cliff in the Barton Creek Greenbelt but were having difficulty finding her so they called in STAR Flight. McLain was part of a flight crew that was using bright lights and night vision when they found the patient. McLain was lowered down to the patient and helped prepare her for transit via helicopter. STAR Flight crews radioed for help indicating something was wrong. Rescue crews on the ground located McLain, who had severe injuries, and attempted to resuscitate her. She was pronounced dead at the scene, ATCEMS chief Ernesto...

The National Transportation Safety Board sent Metro three urgent recommendations Wednesday regarding the ventilation of tunnels in response to the fatal smoke incident Jan. 12 in Washington, D.C. In a letter to interim General Manager Jack Requa, NTSB said Metro should assess its ventilation system, write a procedure for tunnel ventilation and establish ongoing ventilation training for control center staff and emergency responders. "Procedures for ventilation of smoke in emergencies can be critical, but they vary across systems, and in some systems are inadequate — as we have found in the present WMATA investigation,” acting NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said...

An investigator Monday night said that it’ll be a long time before it’s known exactly what caused smoke to fill a Yellow Line train south of the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station Monday afternoon. A woman died; dozens of people were taken to area hospital, including two in critical condition, and Metro service still hasn't been fully restored.

RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) - A Cirrus SR22 recreational plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean Saturday, 51 miles southeast of Chincoteague Island, Va. The Coast Guard reported one person was on board. Sources with knowledge of the initial investigation say it is highly likely the pilot is dead. According to the NTSB, the plane took off from Waukesha, Wisc. and was scheduled to land in Manassas, Va. Watchstanders at the Coast Guard 5th District in Portsmouth, Va. received notification at approximately 2:40 p.m. that the aircraft with only the pilot aboard failed to land at Manassas Regional Airport as scheduled. Instead...

On July 2, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced that it would not reopen the investigation into the destruction of TWA 800. This was the Boeing 747 that was blown out of the sky ten miles south of the Long Island coast on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people on board. The TWA 800 Project, a team of former aviation investigators and scientists, had petitioned the NTSB to examine evidence that pointed toward a missile strike on the airline. Not surprisingly, the NTSB, which had invested four years of resources to prove some other theory, any other theory,...