How Air Crash Investigators Made Flying Safe
Air crash investigators do not look for someone to blame. Since 1951, the international rule - ICAO Annex 13 - has required the opposite: find the cause, and only the cause, because a crew that fears prosecution has every reason to hide the truth from the people trying to prevent the next crash.
This video explains how that rule turned seventy years of wreckage into the safest form of mass travel ever built. A Boeing 767's two recorders, read within three days of a Miami runway overrun in September 2026. A Comet airliner's fuselage, lowered into a water tank at Farnborough in 1954, to find the metal fatigue that was breaking up the world's first jet airliner. An Australian chemist, building the first flight recorder in his own garage because nobody else saw the point. A captain at Tenerife in 1977, whose fatal certainty went unchallenged by his own crew, and the training - Crew Resource Management - that case created. Air France 447, recovered from nearly four kilometres down after a two-year search. The 737 MAX's MCAS, and the formal objections two governments filed against a third government's own final report.
Each case changed one thing. Together, they are why ICAO's 2025 safety report puts the fatal accident rate at 0.11 per million flights.
But the video does not stop there. An aircraft lost in 2014 is still missing. Final reports can still take years. Cockpit voice recorders on many aircraft still in service record only a two-hour loop. And right now, in 2026, India's investigation into Air India Flight 171 - 260 dead, both fuel switches found moved to CUTOFF seconds after take-off - is the live test of everything this video describes: a preliminary finding made public within a month, and a final report still not published more than a year on.
Is the system that grew out of a 1944 conference in Chicago still moving forwards? This video makes its own case, and leaves the verdict on Air India 171 open, because it still is.
In these topics
Tags
Chapters
- Five minutes after a crash
- Why investigators don't blame
- The Comet and the water tank
- Inventing the black box
- From wreckage to cause
- Tenerife and the cockpit
- Air France 447: two years on the seabed
- The 737 MAX
- Why flying is now so safe
- Where the system is weak
- Air India 171: the test now
- Forwards or backwards?
Sources and credits
Photo credits (Wikimedia Commons)
- NTSB crash site of 21 Air Flight 7598, the Miami 767 overrun, 8 Sept 2026: National Transportation Safety Board, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A21_Air_Flight_7598_crash_site.png
- BOAC de Havilland Comet 1 G-ALYP (Yoke Peter), lost off Elba 1954: Originally Photographer Unknown, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABritish_Overseas_Airways_Corporation_-_de_Havilland_DH-106_Comet_1_G-ALYP.jpg
- Dr David Warren with his first prototype flight recorder: Uploaded first to de.wikipedia: 18:30, 27. Apr 2004 . . Avatar (Diskussion) . . 600 x 593 (43672 Byte) (Dave Warren - Erfinder des Flugschreiber mit einem Proto, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADave_Warren_with_BlackBox_Prototype.jpg
- NTSB recorder specialist examining the cockpit flight recorder circuit card, UPS Flight 2976 crash, Nov 2025: NTSBgov, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANTSB_recorder_specialist_examines_the_circuit_card_assembly_from_the_cockpit_flight_recorder_from_the_UPS_MD-11_freighter_crash_was_performed_in_the_NTSB_vehicle_recorder_laboratory_in_Washington%2C_D.C._on_6_November_2025.jpg
- Wreckage on the runway at Los Rodeos after the Tenerife airport disaster, 27 March 1977: Unknown; uploaded to commons by User:Mr.Nostalgic in light of a donation by the Dutch National Archives, CC0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHet_verongelukte_KLM-toestel_De_Rijn%2C_Bestanddeelnr_929-1005_-_cropped.jpg
- Air France A330 F-GZCP, the AF447 aircraft, May 2009: Wim Callaert, CC0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AF-GZCP_Aircraft.jpg
- AF447 wreckage (vertical stabiliser) recovered from the Atlantic, June 2009: National Transportation Safety Board, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWreckage_of_F-GZCP.jpg
- NTSB investigation of the Boeing 737-9 MAX (Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 door-plug incident), Jan 2023: NTSBgov, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANTSB_investigation_of_the_January_5%2C_2023_accident_involving_Alaska_Airlines_Flight_1282_on_a_Boeing_737-9_MAX_-_5.jpg
- U.S. Navy lowers the Bluefin-21 submersible to search for MH370, Indian Ocean, April 2014: Official U.S. Navy Page from United States of America, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_U.S._Navy_assists_in_the_search_for_Malaysia_Airlines_flight_MH370._%2814049585751%29.jpg
Primary sources
- ICAO, Convention on International Civil Aviation (Doc 7300), Article 26 - the 7 December 1944 Chicago Convention requirement to investigate.
- ICAO Annex 13, Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation, 13th ed., 2024 - first adopted 11 April 1951; the 'sole objective... prevention' / 'not... to apportion blame' text; the 30-day preliminary and 12-month final report targets; the state-comment procedure.
- UK Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, Report of the Court of Inquiry (Cohen Report), presented to Parliament February 1955 - the Comet G-ALYP loss, the RAE Farnborough water-tank fatigue test, and the window-corner finding.
- Defence Science and Technology Group (Australia) and Museums Victoria - David Warren and the ARL Flight Memory Recorder, 1953-58; Australia's 1967 CVR mandate.
- Spanish CIAIAC, Tenerife accident final report, 1978 - the 27 March 1977 KLM/Pan Am collision and its cockpit-communication finding.
- BEA (France), Final Report on the accident on 1st June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203 registered F-GZCP, published 5 July 2012 - AF447's cause, the May 2011 recorder recovery near 3,900 m, and the stall-training and pinger-duration recommendations.
- KNKT (Indonesia), Lion Air 610 final report, 25 October 2019; EAIB (Ethiopia), Ethiopian 302 final report, December 2022, with NTSB and BEA comments appended - the MCAS finding and the formal dissent.
- US House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, The Boeing 737 MAX Aircraft final report, September 2020 - the March 2019 worldwide grounding.
- ICAO Safety Report 2025 Edition - the 0.11 per million departures 2025 fatal accident rate, down from 0.27 in 2024; 387 fatalities in 2025, 260 of them on AI171.
- India AAIB, Air India Flight 171 preliminary report, 12 July 2025, and Supreme Court submission, reported 15-16 July 2026 - the fuel-switch finding and the October 2026 draft-report expectation.
- NTSB, DCA26MA352 / press release NR20260909, 9 September 2026 - the Miami 21 Air 767 recorder findings, read within three days.
- Federal Register, '25-Hour Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) Requirement, New Aircraft Production', 2026-02110, published 2 February 2026 - the FAA's 25-hour CVR rule.
- Ocean Infinity, 'Conclusion of the search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370', January 2026 - the 23 January 2026 search-phase end.
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