Each month, we sort through scores of recent NTSB preliminary accident reports to develop our Accident Briefs feature, which begins on page 19 this month. We don’t use all of them—there’s never enough space—so many prelims don’t make the cut. It might be helpful for readers if we explain how we decide which ones to publish.
We start with the premise that we’re trying to prevent accidents and educate readers on how and why they occur. Only rarely has the NTSB assigned a probable cause to each recent month’s collection of mishaps, so we dive into the narrative to identify a likely reason. The idea is that understanding how something happened can help the majority of us avoid repeating it. So, we typically exclude taildragger groundloops, agricultural operations and rotorcraft right off the bat. So, yes, there’s some selection bias: A relatively successful off-field landing without injuries probably won’t make the cut. But there are some themes we hammer on.
