With dozens of companies planning to begin operating new eVTOL aircraft as early as 2025, federal agencies are pondering how to safely integrate them into the national airspace—and how to handle the inevitable accident investigations.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will be in charge of investigating all accidents and certain incidents that occur during eVTOL flights, Tim LeBaron, director of the NTSB’s Office of Aviation Safety, said Tuesday during a panel discussion on aviation policy at Heli-Expo in Atlanta. This covers passenger-carrying air taxi operations as well as cargo transportation missions using new eVTOL aircraft, which can take off and land vertically but fly like an airplane with a fixed-wing during cruise.
LeBaron, who has worked with the NTSB for nearly 20 and spent 15 years as an investigator at the agency, said the NTSB is looking at how it will investigate eVTOL accidents and incidents. He expressed concern over the lack of data recorders and cameras in many eVTOL models. “I'm shocked at how many [OEMs] say, ‘No, we don't have plans for that,’” he said.
Without a camera and data recorders in an aircraft, in the event of an accident, “nobody learns from that,” he said. “There are no safety improvements if we have an undetermined [cause].” LeBaron stressed that even though the FAA does not yet require the installation of cameras and data recorders in new eVTOL aircraft, OEMs should be proactive and build them into the aircraft as a critical safety feature. “I think we need to get to the point where it's mandatory,” he said.
LeBaron also stressed the importance of recording flight data on the cloud to ensure it is preserved in the event that a data recorder gets destroyed. “Why wait for that to be the requirement? I don’t know if it ever will be, but I hope it is,” LeBaron said.