Stereotyping the work of aviation accident investigation boards (AIBs) may become impossible in light of presentations by several of their leaders at a recent global conference. More openness to data-mining methods pioneered by airlines and civil aviation authorities (CAAs) is apparent, and some AIBs already have extensive experience conducting analyses of their own safety data for predictive purposes. Leaders and investigators who had been reluctant to move in this direction now point to the influence of non-AIB initiatives with international reach, such as the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing program in the United States.
A few AIBs envision complementing their own safety-intelligence resources by partnering with CAAs for access to aggregated, de-identified airline data from voluntary reporting systems and/or flight data monitoring, although such data formerly had been considered incompatible with AIB methods and missions (ASW, 5/11, p. 18; ASW, 11/…
