If there’s a better public agency than the National Transportation Safety Board, we can’t find it.
It is universally admired for the professionalism and expertise of its staff members and for their independence from politics as they investigate accidents.
Admired everywhere, that is, except at President Donald Trump’s White House. The NTSB is the latest target of his assault on independent agencies, which should concern everyone who rides in an airplane, train or bus.
The president has now fired two of the NTSB’s five board members before their terms were up, defying a law that Congress wisely intended to wall off the NTSB from political influence.
The latest victim, Todd Inman, was the NTSB’s on-site representative for the investigation of the midair collision of a civilian airliner and Army helicopter that killed 67 people over the Potomac River in Washington 14 months ago.