NTSB Investigation of Weather-Related Aviation Incidents and Accidents

This paper describes the current investigative process for weather-related events, explores the challenges facing weather investigations, and discusses potential solutions to enable better data capture for time-sensitive events to better understand the human factors associated with why these events occurred. Challenges discussed include (1) investigative data loss due to delayed notification of weather encounters and duration of flight following weather encounters if flight continued to destination, and (2) increasing lack of investigative information regarding pilot use of weather resources due to increasing availability of online sources that do not necessarily archive pilot or flight information. A review of available weather sources is presented with respect to investigative quality and availability of such information. Lastly, several mitigations are discussed for industry consideration to improve these investigative challenges.