An investigation of the role of politics in the safety recommendation process of the National Transportation Safety Board

This dissertation analyzed the safety recommendations made to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to determine whether there was evidence to support the notion that this safety recommendation process was affected by political motivations. The recommendations associated with the investigations of major aviation accidents occurring from 1 January 1993 to 31 December 1997 were scrutinized in order to find patterns of disagreement between the FAA and NTSB over the intent and relevance of those safety recommendations. A number of current and former influential civil aviation safety officials, both within and outside the U.S. government, were interviewed in order to gauge what consensus existed as to the aviation industry's definition of detrimental political influence and how that influence may have been applied in those accidents explored in this study.; The analysis used the interview data, as well as data from NTSB accident reports, NTSB safety recommendations associated with these accidents, and the correspondence between the FAA and NTSB related to those recommendations. While the outcome shows a relationship between higher media visibility accidents and disagreements between the NTSB and FAA, a mechanism that relates higher media visibility to NTSB political influence has not been identified in this study.