How Tragedy Led to Trust: National Aviation History Month

By Jeff Marcus, Chief, NTSB Safety Recommendations Division

From the Wright brothers’ first flight on December 17, 1903, to today, aviation has made remarkable progress. The affordability, speed, capacity, comfort, and, most importantly, safety of flight have all improved to the point that flying is one of the safest modes of transportation.

But that safety has been hard won. In honor of National Aviation History Month, let’s reflect on how the  aviation industry and Congressional action have evolved to further transportation safety.

The Early Days of Flying

Although most people are familiar with the Wright brothers, who did the research and development that produced the first airplane, many are unfamiliar with other important visionaries, such as Otto Lilienthal and Samuel Langley.

Karl Wilhelm “Otto” Lilienthal was a German pioneer of aviation who made the first successful flights with gliders, making the idea of a heavier-than-air machine a reality. His flight attempts in 1891 are seen as the beginning of human flight. Lilienthal made over 2,000 flights in self-designed gliders until his death on August 9, 1896, when he was unable to regain control after his glider stalled. Falling from about 50 ft, he broke his neck and died the next day. At the time of his death, Lilienthal’s total lifetime flying time was about 5 hours. The Wright brothers later cited Lilienthal’s death as the point when their serious interest in flight research began.

Another early aviation pioneer was Samuel Langley. In addition to being an American aviation innovator, Langley was the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. His first aviation success came on May 6, 1896, when his unpiloted, steam-powered, fixed-wing aircraft, weighing 25 pounds, made two flights—one 2,300 ft and the other 3,300 ft—after a catapult launch from a boat on the Potomac River. He followed that on November 11, 1896, with an improved aircraft model that flew more than 5,000 feet. In 1898, based on the success of his models, Langley received grants of $50,000 from the War Department and $20,000 from the Smithsonian to develop a piloted airplane.

Langley gave up on the project after two crashes on take-off on October 7 and December 8, 1903 (just a few days before the Wright brothers’ successful flight). The Smithsonian displayed Langley’s device as the first human-carrying airplane in the world capable of sustained free flight, triggering a decades-long feud with Orville Wright.

The first aviation fatality in a powered aircraft crash came on September 17, 1908, when, during a demonstration flight for the War Department in hopes of getting a military contract for their invention, Orville Wright crashed his aircraft, injured himself, and killed his passenger, Signal Corp Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge.

The Wright Flyer flew four circles around Fort Myer at an altitude of 150 feet. Halfway through the fifth, the right propeller broke, creating a vibration. The damaged propeller hit a guy-wire bracing the rear vertical rudder. The wire tore out of its fastening allowing the rudder to swivel to the horizontal sending the Flyer into a nosedive.

Wright cut the engine and glided to about 75 feet, but then the aircraft descended nose-down into the ground. Wright and Selfridge were thrown forward, and Selfridge struck one of the wooden uprights of the framework, fracturing the base of his skull. He died 3 hours later without regaining consciousness. Wright suffered severe injuries and was hospitalized for 7 weeks.

Despite the setback, aviation continued to develop worldwide, and on January 1, 1914, the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line became the world’s first scheduled airline. The airline provided service between St. Petersburg, Florida, and neighboring Tampa—a distance of about 23 miles with a travel time of 23 minutes (compared to 2 hours by boat). A one-way fare was $5.00 (approximately $130 in 2020 dollars), and flights rarely exceeded an altitude of 5 feet. The service terminated on May 5, 1914.

The Birth of Commercial Aviation

During the 1920s, airlines began to offer regular commercial air service. The were 24 fatal commercial airline crashes over 1926 and 1927, 16 in 1928. In 1929, which remains the worst year on record, there were 51 fatal crashes, about 1 for every 1,000,000 miles flown. In today’s world, this rate would result in 7,000 fatal airline accidents per year, or about 20 every day.

Partly in reaction to this accident rate, Congress passed the Air Commerce Act, which President Calvin Coolidge signed into law on May 20, 1926. The act established federal control over civil aviation by making the secretary of commerce responsible for improving air commerce by designating and establishing airways; establishing, operating, and maintaining aids to air navigation (but not airports); sponsoring and conducting research and development to improve such aids; licensing pilots; issuing airworthiness certificates for aircraft and major aircraft components; and investigating accidents.

On March 31, 1931, a Fokker F-10A operated by Transcontinental and Western Air (which evolved to become TWA) crashed near Bazaar, Kansas, after the wooden structure of one wing failed in flight. The crash killed eight people, including Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. The investigation found that the wooden wing became moist over time, causing the glue connecting the wing to the body to weaken, allowing the wing to separate. At the time, the investigation was publicly criticized for its secret nature. This crash brought about significant changes in the airplane industry, and was of cultural significance, given the death of Rockne and the public perception of aircraft safety. This accident, which killed a well-known public figure and the secretive nature of the investigation brought public attention to learning from accident investigations to prevent such disasters in the future. The intense public interest forced the Department of Commerce to make the results of aircraft accident investigations more transparent.

The investigation of the Bazaar, Kansas, crash resulted in a public expectation that the US government would objectively investigate crashes and publicly release its findings. In 1934, the Air Commerce Act was amended to require that reports on probable causes of fatal aircraft crashes be made public and banned the use of such reports and related evidence in court proceedings.

On May 6, 1935, a Douglas DC-2 operated by TWA crashed near Atlanta, Missouri. Its pilots were trying to make an emergency landing before their fuel ran out. The crash killed five, including Senator Bronson M. Cutting of New Mexico. Public debate and criticism over the cause of the accident showed the need for an independent investigative body.

Investigators from the Bureau of Air Commerce concluded that several factors led to the crash, including communications malfunctions, darkness, inaccurate weather forecasts, worsening weather at the destination airport, and errors in judgment, both from the airline dispatchers and the flight crew. They also found TWA in violation of several aviation regulations. Senator Cutting’s death drove Congress to investigate the Bureau of Air Commerce’s management of civil aviation. Senator Royal S. Copeland established a special subcommittee that harshly criticized the bureau in a report. Partly as a result, in 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which transferred federal responsibilities for nonmilitary aviation from the Bureau of Air Commerce to a new, independent agency: the Civil Aeronautics Authority.

Focus on Safety

On June 30, 1940, the Civil Aeronautic Authority was split into the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). The CAA area of responsibility was air traffic control, safety programs, and airway development. The CAB focused on safety rulemaking, accident investigation, and economic regulation of the airlines.

During the 1950s, airline travel expanded. A midair collision on June 30, 1956, between a TWA Super Constellation and a United Air Lines DC-7 over the Grand Canyon killed all 128 occupants of the two airplanes. The collision occurred while the airliners were flying under visual flight rules in uncongested airspace. The accident showed that, even though US air traffic had more than doubled since the end of World War II, little had been done to expand the air traffic control system or to increase safeguards against midair collisions. This accident led directly to the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, which President Dwight Eisenhower signed on August 23, 1958. The law created the Federal Aviation Agency and led to the creation of the air traffic control system as we know it today.

On October 15, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Department of Transportation (DOT) Act, which created the new cabinet-level department with five major agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration. The DOT Act also created, within the DOT, an independent National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) with authority to investigate accidents in all modes of transportation. The new DOT began operations on April 1, 1967.

In 1974, Congress made the NTSB completely independent of the DOT with the Independent Safety Board Act of 1974, which also prohibits the use of any portion of an NTSB report as evidence in a lawsuit related to matters discussed in the report and, with few restrictive exceptions, bars discovery, admittance into evidence, and public release of transcripts or recordings of a “cockpit or surface vehicle . . . voice or video recorder,” if not made public by the NTSB. In 1996, the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act expanded the role of the NTSB to include coordinating victim and family assistance following a major aviation accident.

The history of aviation, and the remarkable safety enjoyed today, are the result of the detailed aviation accident investigations throughout the years. And that work continues at the NTSB today, because we know that, from tragedy, we draw knowledge to improve the safety of us all.

Jeff Marcus, Chief of the Safety Recommendations Division, is retiring from federal service on December 29 after 43 years.