NTSB links protected data and cautious AI to safety gains

Facing its 60th anniversary in 2027, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is beginning to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) in selected workflows while requiring human oversight. At the Greater Washington Business Aviation Association’s 2026 Safety Day, the agency said better data use would be needed to reverse a flattening general-aviation fatal-accident rate.

Warren Randolph, acting director of the NTSB’s office of aviation safety and chief data officer, said investigators, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and industry must apply accident lessons together. Speaking in a fireside chat with association vice-president Vincent Mickens, he described the 1990s as a period when accidents were becoming almost normalized. His conclusion from that spate was that stakeholders had to come together.

Randolph acknowledged that the parties answer to different authorities and pursue different agendas, which complicates cooperation. Government and industry nevertheless have combined their focus on shared data, an approach he credited with elevating safety. That model requires trust: “We needed protection so that organizations could feel that they would not be violated or there would not be enforcement action.”

He cited advisory circulars and the agency’s Part 193 rulemaking as efforts to provide that protection. Randolph said those mechanisms continue to evolve and that more can be done. His emphasis was on moving information into frontline safety systems, rather than merely gathering incident data.

What does this change for safety managers?

AI remains an internal aid rather than an autonomous decision-maker. Randolph described the work as deliberately cautious because the NTSB is, by nature, risk averse. The agency is examining how AI and what he called “super intelligence” could enter its workflows, but implementation remains at an early stage.

Any product or service using AI must identify that use, and the people delivering it remain responsible for it. For transcription with an aviation-focused language model, a system trained to process language, NTSB scientists validate the final text before use. The agency also uses closed models—systems restricted to keep sensitive material out of the public domain—so information remains fenced inside its approved environment.

No fleet-capacity or operating-cost change was announced at Safety Day. For operators, the practical change is faster access to safety evidence. Randolph wants investigative reports, findings, dockets and recommendations published promptly through the NTSB website, allowing operators to bring them into their safety management system (SMS), a structured process for identifying and managing safety risks.

Randolph also framed AI as a way to improve the products and information the NTSB provides the industry. He called that effort a team sport and committed to distributing NTSB data more efficiently. The agency’s Carol program already provides a web dashboard for filtering records against a fleet, landing facility or another selected category. It allows organizations to narrow accident information to the areas most relevant to their operations.

Randolph said the general-aviation fatal-accident rate had improved, partly because of information sharing, but the curve was flattening. He expects AI, broader information sharing and more systematic data collection to drive the rate further down. That remains an expectation rather than a measured result, and it depends on the quality and availability of the underlying evidence.

The unresolved Learjet 60 evidence

A Learjet 60 accident occurred on Sunday, and the NTSB has not established whether the aircraft broke up in flight. Randolph declined to speculate while investigators were still understanding the debris field. Some components were located miles away, widening the area investigators must examine.

The agency is working with the FAA, air traffic control and meteorologists to examine a possible in-flight breakup, an aircraft breaking apart while airborne, and surrounding convective weather. Randolph stressed that investigators were still trying to determine what happened. The NTSB is working at the impact site cautiously because of contamination.

Board member Tom Chapman is on site with data scientists, investigators and family-assistance specialists. The NTSB is also partnering with the FAA, the aircraft operator, Bombardier and Pratt & Whitney Canada. Randolph said: “This is part of our party system. This is the only way we can do business.”

The party system is the framework that brings the FAA, the operator and the manufacturers into the inquiry alongside NTSB investigators. It combines regulatory, technical and operational evidence while the NTSB develops its findings. Causation remains unresolved.

For safety managers, the practical test is whether protected reporting produces faster fleet-wide corrective action rather than another layer of data collection. The next test for the NTSB is whether timely, protected data can break the flattening accident-rate curve while investigators resolve the Learjet 60 sequence without drawing conclusions ahead of the debris and weather evidence.