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Three planes landed during "inconvenient" incidentAs investigators revealed that a Teterboro air traffic controller making a personal phone call initially failed to warn a small plane of aircraft in its way, NBC New York has learned the same tower involved in the fatal collision over the Hudson had another piece of bad luck recently. The FAA confirms the only controller on duty on the overnight shift at Teterboro airport back on July 5th was inadvertently locked out of the cab, or work area, for 43 minutes. "There was an inconvenience, but he took appropriate steps," said FAA spokesman Jim Peters....

WASHINGTON – Aircraft design standards aren't tough enough for planes to withstand collisions with growing numbers of large birds, safety investigators examining an Oklahoma crash that killed five men said Tuesday. The Federal Aviation Administration requires the bodies of commercial aircraft to withstand a collision with a bird weighing 4 pounds or 8 pounds depending upon the section of the plane — standards that haven't been updated since the 1970s, investigators told the National Transportation Safety Board. An FAA advisory committee spent 10 years examining whether the standards should be updated and then disbanded without reaching a conclusion, investigators said....

WASHINGTON--Skillful piloting may have prevented a disaster for President Barack Obama and his campaign last summer, a former federal safety official said Friday. A report released by the National Transportation Safety Board indicates an inflated slide may have pressed against critical control cables, forcing the emergency landing of Obama¹s campaign plane on July 7, 2008. The slide inflated inside the tail cone of the campaign¹s McDonnell Douglas MD-81 shortly after takeoff from Chicago¹s Midway International Airport, the report said. Investigators found evidence that the slide and a broken walkway railing inside the tail cone may have pressed against elevator cables...

PARIS (Reuters) - The state of the wreckage from Air France flight AF 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, which crashed on June 1 with 228 people on board, suggest the plane was not destroyed in mid-air, French investigators said on Thursday. Alain Bouillard, who leads the investigation on behalf of France's BEA air accident board, said the search for the flight recorders, or black boxes, from the Airbus A330 aircraft would continue until July 10.

A key circuit on the train track near Monday's derailment in Washington, D.C., was apparently not operating as it should have been, raising the possibility that the Metro train that crashed into another one may not have known to slow down, accident investigators said today. Investigators tested six circuits between the two stations where the crash occurred. Five of those performed as expected, according to National Transportation Safety Board investigator Deborah Hersman. Such circuits let trains know how fast to go and provide them with information about whether there's another train up ahead. But one circuit showed what Hersman described...

WASHINGTON – Investigators looking into the deadly crash of two Metro transit trains focused Tuesday on why a computerized system failed to halt an oncoming train, and why the train failed to stop even though the emergency brake was pressed. At the time of the crash, the train was also operating in automatic mode, meaning it was controlled primarily by computer. In that mode, the operator's main job is to open and close the doors and respond in case of an emergency. Debbie Hersman, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said it was unclear if the emergency brake...

Last week I wrote that about the suppression of an EPA report identifying the locations of “high hazard” coal sludge sites. I questioned whether the federal government was giving another government entity favored treatment, in this case the TVA -- which was the source of the original massive spill. It appears this may have been so the case of the fatal subway crash in Washington DC. In a report in the Washington Post today, a NTSB Board member says Metro failed to heed the advice of federal regulators to either strengthen the cars or take them out of service. They...

Autopsies revealed fractures in the legs, hips and arms of Air France disaster victims, a Brazilian official said Wednesday. Experts said those injuries — and the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic — strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air.

Even after Flight 1549 glided to a near-perfect forced landing on the Hudson River in January, the plane and its 155 passengers and crew came within inches of catastrophe when someone cracked open a rear door, sending water gushing into the cabin. Who opened the door is one of the questions the National Transportation Safety Board hopes to answer during three days of hearings on the accident beginning Tuesday. Other issues include crew training for forced water landings and dual engine failures, whether aircraft standards for ditching are adequate, bird detection and mitigation efforts at airports, and whether engine standards...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The pilots of the Continental Connection turboprop that crashed in February near Buffalo N.Y., rushed through mandatory checklists in a matter of seconds, but spent almost the entire 59-minute flight from Newark, N.J., bantering about personal issues, job goals and the theoretical hazards of ice accumulation during winter flying, according to the cockpit recorder transcript released Tuesday by federal investigators.

Ice buildup wasn't a major factor in last month's Colgan Air Inc. commuter-plane crash that killed 50 people near Buffalo, N.Y., federal investigators said. In its latest update on the investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board said ice "had a minimal impact" on the performance or handling of the twin engine turboprop. Instead, the safety board said the latest evidence indicates the plane didn't experience any mechanical problems and that it was flying and reacting normally to cockpit commands when its speed bled off and it went into a fatal roll.

Jim Hall Says ATR 42, Q400 Have Inherent Risks In Icing Even as the National Transportation Safety Board continues its investigation into the downing of Continental Connection Flight 3407 near Buffalo, NY -- and investigators take pains to note it's too soon to draw any conclusions about what caused the fatal crash -- a former head of the NTSB says all twin-engine turboprop airliners should be grounded immediately. The Toronto Star reports Jim Hall -- who was appointed by then-President Clinton to head up NTSB in 1994, and left in 2001

Q400 Pitched Up 31 Degrees Before Crash The crew of the Bombardier Q400 that crashed in Buffalo on Thursday got a stall warning and the stick pusher engaged but still the aircraft pitched upward 31 degrees before turning almost 180 degrees and dropping onto a house in the Buffalo suburb of Clarence Center, near the outer marker for Buffalo Niagara International Airport. The sequence of events, which included a 45-degree dive with a 106-degree right bank ended 26 seconds later in the fireball on the ground, killing 49 people on the plane and one on the ground, the owner of...

Associated Press CLARENCE, N.Y. – Investigators have recovered the two "black boxes" from the burned-out wreckage of a plane that crashed near Buffalo and killed 50 people. Spokesman Keith Holloway of the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders have already been sent to Washington for examination...

Minutes before Continental Flight 3407 plummeted to the ground killing all on board the pilots noticed a build up of ice on the plane's wings and windshield, an official said Friday. The plane was on its approach to Buffalo airport, New York state, when the crew spotted the problem, according to recordings taken earlier Friday from the aircraft's black boxes after the crash left 50 dead. "The crew discussed significant ice buildup, ice on the windshield and leading edge of the wings," Steve Chealander, an official with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), told a press conference. "The crew briefed...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bird remains were found in both engines of a US Airways jetliner that lost power and ditched in New York's Hudson River last month, U.S. transportation investigators said on Wednesday. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said both engines of the Airbus A320 were damaged and contained "organic material" that was sent to bird experts at the Smithsonian Institution for identification. The board previously had said bird remains were found in the right engine, and now has confirmed the same in the left engine. The pilot of Flight 1549 bound for Charlotte, North Carolina, radioed to air...

NEW YORK – The investigation of the emergency crash landing of a US Airways jetliner will last a year and the lessons will go on for decades. That's the word from Robert Benzon, the National Transportation Safety Board's chief investigator on the crash. He spoke on Monday as teams of investigators began the lengthy process of analyzing the damage to each part of the aircraft.

NEW YORK – Investigators now say the right engine of the miracle US Airways jet is still attached to the airplane. A spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday that both engines broke apart from the jet after it hit the water. But on Saturday, NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson said the engine is still on the plane. He said visibility in the water was so bad earlier that divers could not see the engine. NEW YORK (AP) — Investigators encountered more treacherous conditions Saturday as they embarked on the delicate task of trying to hoist the miracle US...

<p>Some experts think so. In a Times report today, they point to a similar accident near Silver Spring, Md., in 1996.</p> <p>Eight passengers and all three crew members on a Maryland Rail Commuter train died in that fiery collision.</p> <p>“The actions of the MARC train engineer prompted two questions that would need to be answered to understand the accident events,” officials with the National Transportation Safety Board wrote in their final report. “Why did he behave as he did? How could a well-respected, experienced engineer forget a signal?”</p>

Justice of the Peace Tom Gillam tells KFDM News a third body has been recovered from the Gulf and the search continues for two other people who were on a helicopter that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, south of Sabine Pass. Petty Officer Renee Aiello tells KFDM News the helicopter was reported down at 9:47 a.m. Thursday about two miles off the coast of Sabine Pass. She says the call came into the 8th District Operations Center in New Orleans from Rotorcraft, a helicopter leasing company. Aiello says the helicopter pilot had not checked in as scheduled. Aiello says...