A crane picking up a large piece of an aircraft that crashed into a swamp and buried itself deeply into a watery and muddy hole. It was in December in the outer banks in Virginia.

Once the larger pieces are recovered the investigator has to dig out every small bit of the aircraft out of its cold and muddy grave. It is dangerous and tedious work but critical to finding the answer to the question, “why did this plane crash”.

A crash into a mountain where the heat of the crash melted the parts of the plane into the rock required repelling up the face of the mountain to photograph.

Then the investigator and his team had to try to kick as many parts as possible from the rocky vertical surface.

Crash Investigations

The purposes of Aircraft Accident Investigation are many fold but is usually seen by the public as the process of determining the reason for an aviation accident. While that is certainly a part of the process it is not the end of the effort. In the book, The Answer, a number of the true objectives of an investigation are discussed. Finding the answer to the cause of the accident is usually just the beginning of the process.

Every accident, whether of a commercial aircraft, a private or a military plane or helicopter, has a cause. These accidents don’t just spontaneously occur. It may be a mechanical issue that brought the plane down or some human factor but it is the investigators’ job to make that determination, using all of the evidence available both at the crash site, in the manufacturing facility or in the actions of some human who was either flying the aircraft, helping to build it or involved in its maintenance. Like any investigator, the aircraft accident investigator needs a thorough knowledge of the aircraft, of the manufacturing processes and of the safety features of the plane or helicopter. The vast majority of the investigators through-out the world have been pilots and have had extensive training the process of investigating an aviation accident.

That is where the similarity of the expectations for and roles of the investigators end. In the United States, for example, every aviation related organization, airline, military, manufacturer has a safety organization but there are only two organizations that actually do nothing but accident investigations. They are the National Transportation Safety Board that investigates all types of transportation accidents. The United States Naval Safety Center’s Office of Aircraft Accident Investigation is the only group in the United States that performs only aircraft accident investigations for both all Navy and Marine Corps aviation with both military and professional accident investigators. The other military branches use other pilots in their service to perform the crash investigations. At any time the individuals performing the investigation may have never, or only once or twice served in in an accident investigation.

There is an international organization of all of the professional investigators and anyone else who is involved in the legal issues that often accompany a major air disaster. ISASI, (International Society of Aircraft Safety Investigators) not only focuses on education for the members but also has a strict group of ethical standards for all who work to bring light to the darkness created by an aviation accident. Their members come from nations through-out the world.

In 2009 ISASI has it’s international conference in the United States in September.