. The U.S. aviation community has made steady progress in improving safety and reducing the number of aircraft accidents, partially because of its adoption of numerous safety recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt said Wednesday.
Safety recommendations are “our biggest tool,” Sumwalt said during a meeting aimed at outlining progress on the recommendations included in its 2017–2018 Most Wanted List of transportation safety improvements.
Adoption of those recommendations can save lives, he added, noting that the last fatal accident involving a U.S. scheduled passenger airliner was the 2009 crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Clarence Center, New York. The crash killed all 49 people in the airplane and one person on the ground, destroyed the airplane — a Bombardier Q400 — and prompting a series of safety recommendation…
