Help with Accident Report Project

Accident Report Tips

Hey, Rick Lawin here with little information on this assignment Aircraft Accident Report exercise. Now you really need to read the instructions several times over so you get a good feel of what's going on, but let me highlight just a couple of points first and I'll read it to you. This exercise tests your ability to apply the lessons and information. Learning this course to develop a partial Aircraft Accident Investigation report based upon the accident information provided, that is the scenario that we've included in this package. Now let me go over some of the points on how we're going to do this report. First of all, after you read the instructions a couple of times, you're going to get into the actual narrative of the accident itself and I want you to be aware of something here, and that is when you see the words “it was determined.” That's a point for you to say okay, what do I have to do here? And what that means is, if it says “it was determined” you have to locate a legitimate source of where that information they have come from. For instance, if it says “it was determined” that the airport weather was below airport minimums, then you’d simply go, “Well let’s see, I learned something in the course here. Where could I find legitimate weather sources?” And that might be NOAA, NASA, AWOS, FAA flight service, whatever. So you simply say “According to NASA or NOAA, the airport was below airport weather minimums.” Bingo, that's it! That's all you have to do. If you real long, “it says it was determined” that the aircraft was that it's appropriate growth weight. Well, what document or manual may tell you how much the aircraft should weigh? And that's all you have to do, is use site, where that source of information would come from, a legitimate source. You certainly wouldn't cite in weather if we went back to that and say “Well, according to the local news the weather was so and so.” That is a legitimate source that the NTSB would use. So again, you're looking for these legitimate sources. That's all you have to do, is put them in there. You may find, as you read, it was determined the aircraft hit a hundred- foot pole, traveled X number of distances, and struck the ground at X number of angle. Well, that's a right triangle issue. That's math, that's deduction. You'll have to do the math, and it's pretty basic math, but you'll have to do that. Now let's look at some of these sections real quick, so you’re kind of comfortable with it. When you say the first thing you do when you get there is brief history of flight, what happened on the flight. Basic. It took off, it went here, it crashed - the on-scene actions. Well, you've read in the first couple of modules what on-scene procedures required, so you state what you did on scene. Now you don't have to draw some huge diagram, you don't have to make colorful graphics, but you have to list verbally those procedures that you've learned in the course that are probably done when you get to the scene. And that's important. Then, as you go down you gather various bits of information. You place that information that you feel is relative into the various sections that are listed in your report. Now, you gather all this information and you put it in these sections, and now you come down to analysis, the Analysis Section 1.9.

What you're doing is proving the cause and contributing factors of the accident by a good analysis, by the facts that you have found. In the rest of the sections that you have listed the information, that you've got from the being on scene, or reading or interviewing. Whatever the case, you draw from those sections to validate and prove your analysis, and ultimately the analysis proves that the probable cause was this, and these are probably some contributing factors. You jump right over the conclusions and say “Based on the analysis, it is concluded that the probable cause of this flight was this and these are the contributing factors to this accident,” and then you go to the recommendations and you say “Here are some viable, doable, realistic recommendations to prevent this accident from happening again.” So that's how you're going to work this thing. Again, read the instructions a couple of times over. Get a feel for the instructions and then begin to read the information. If you have any questions about it post them in the investigators workshop or contact your instructor so we can get these things resolved. It's really important to start this like right now, so you get a good feel and make a good report. Okay, with that I'll see you in the course. Thanks.