The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that the operator of a drone that collided with an U.S. Army helicopter failed to see and avoid the helicopter because he was intentionally flying the drone out of visual range and did not have adequate knowledge of regulations and safe operating practices.

The deadliest shipping disaster involving a U.S.-flagged vessel in more than 30 years was caused by a captain’s failure to avoid sailing into a hurricane despite numerous opportunities to route a course away from hazardous weather, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced during a public meeting Tuesday. The cargo vessel S.S. El Faro sank Oct. 1, 2015, in the Atlantic Ocean during Hurricane Joaquin, taking the lives of all 33 aboard.

Engine failure on an American Airlines plane that resulted in serious injuries to a passenger and substantial damage to the aircraft will be the subject of a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) meeting on Jan. 23, 2018. The Boeing 767-300 experienced an uncontained failure of the right engine during the take-off roll at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

A research team from the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE) today released a report that concludes that drones that collide with large manned aircraft can cause more structural damage than birds of the same weight for a given impact speed. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will use the research results to help develop operational and collision risk mitigation requirements for drones. ASSURE conducted its research with two different types of drones on two types of aircraft through computer modeling and physical validation testing.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that the April 3, 2016, derailment of Amtrak train 89 near Chester, Pennsylvania was caused by deficient safety management across many levels of Amtrak and the resultant lack of a clear, consistent and accepted vision for safety. A backhoe operator and a track supervisor were killed, and 39 people were injured when Amtrak train 89, traveling on the Northeast Corridor from Philadelphia to Washington on track 3, struck a backhoe at about 7:50 a.m.

The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) may be preparing to take a significant step backwards in its advocacy for worker participation in preventing chemical facility incidents, including catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In April, 2016 the CSB unanimously approved a 4-volume “Macondo Investigation Report” in response to the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon blowout that killed 11 workers, injured 17 and spilled 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The report contained a number of recommendations, including four recommendations calling for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) to significantly enhance its regulations requiring worker participation in the employer’s safety program, and enhanced whistleblower protections for workers participating in safety activities.

A common aviation practice intended to save time is putting planes and their passengers in jeopardy, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which has issued a Safety Alert 071-17 about the hazard. Intersection takeoffs – where a pilot uses only a portion of the runway instead of the entire length for takeoff – is common, but the NTSB says pilots may not fully understand the potential risks associated with conducting intersection takeoffs.

A 22-year-old worker died last week in Streamwood, Illinois after becoming trapped in a manhole. Authorities say Brett Morrow was part of a construction crew working to clean out and install lining in a sanitary sewer system. He was about 30 feet into a two foot-wide pipe when he became trapped. According to news sources, firefighters crawled down through the pipe, but had trouble reaching Morrow because of a large quantity of hardened lining material that was blocking the pipe.

Dan Zak of the Washington Post has written a long feature article on the impact and aftermath of the West fertilizer explosion that killed 15 people, injured 252 and damaged or destroyed 500 buildings in the small town of West Texas on April 17, 2013.