On Monday, the Air Line Pilots Association released a statement critical of the NTSB’s handling of the Asiana crash investigation. “ALPA is stunned by the amount of detailed operational data from on-board recorders released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this soon into the investigation,” ALPA said. “The amount of data released publicly during the field portion of the accident investigation is unprecedented. It is imperative that safety investigators refrain from prematurely releasing the information from on-board recording devices. We have seen in the past that publicizing this data before all of it can be collected and analyzed leads to erroneous conclusions that can actually interfere with the investigative process.”
ALPA’s statement says the release of data points from the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder “encourages wild speculation … about causes of the accident before all the facts are known … and in this case before the flight crew had even been interviewed.” ALPA said the partial data can be taken out of context and may be “sensationalized by the media.” The full text of ALPA’s statement is posted online.
