WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board has hired a record number of employees this year, which it says is leading to a significant decrease in the time needed to complete investigations.
The agency said it will have 433 employees on staff at the end of the current fiscal year, up from a previous high of 397 in August 2019. The NTSB hired 57 new employees last year and is on track to add 70 this year. The agency’s Office of Aviation Safety’s air traffic control division is fully staffed for the first time in seven years, and the number of investigators in the Office of Rail, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations has been increased by nearly 50%. The increased staffing has helped reduce the number of pending investigations more than two years old from a high of 442 in February 2022 to zero by the end of this week.
“My vision for the NTSB is an agency where everything we do — from our investigations to our advocacy to our internal processes and procedures — advances our critical safety mission,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a press release. “The first step was to right-size our agency’s workforce, which had been stagnant for decades, because it is our people who will ensure the NTSB is a ‘mission-first’ agency for years to come.”
Share this article
