You can improve safety
Our investigators have found a safety condition that it is in your organization’s power to improve. Your direct role in the transportation industry, your legislative or regulatory authority, or your significant influence over others in the industry, establishes your organization as able to make or influence safety enhancements.
We can only make recommendations and advocate for their prompt enactment. We need your action to make transportation safer.
Here are some tips on how to communicate with us.
Tips for Responding to a Safety Recommendation
Please respond.
After we issue a recommendation, it is classified Open—Await Response until we have received a response from you that includes the necessary information for us to determine if your completed or planned actions are responsive. In your response, please explain the specific actions you have taken or intend to take in response to the safety recommendation(s) and include proposea timeline for completion. Email your response to executivesecretariat@ntsb.gov to us within 90 days (30 for urgent recommendations).
Evaluation of your response.
Once we have received your email, we will send you a response explaining whether your completed or planned actions are responsive to the recommendation(s) and classify the recommendation(s) accordingly. If the recommendation classification begins with “open,” we do not believe you have satisfied the intent of the recommendation and are expecting future updates as you progress toward completing the pending actions.
Remember to update us.
If the classification assigned to a recommendation begins with “open”, we do not believe you have satisfied the intent of the recommendation and are expecting future updates as you progress toward completing the pending actions. Please update us any time you achieve a significant milestone toward implementing the recommendation(s), or at least annually.
Alternate Actions.
Sometimes recommendation recipients propose alternate solutions that are more appropriate for their organization and still achieve the same safety objective of our recommendation(s). We will determine if your proposal is an acceptable alternate solution and provide feedback.
Understanding our classifications.
We will provide feedback on your efforts by classifying each recommendation as “open” or “closed,” followed by “acceptable” or “unacceptable,” which are our most common classifications. You can find a complete list of our classifications, including a description of each classification here (hypelink)/ [or we can say “below” if we include a full list of all open and closed].
Questions?
If you have any questions about what we’ve recommended, the classification assigned to the recommendation(s), or any part of the response process, please call (202) 314-6290 and ask to be directed to the Safety Recommendations Division. You can also email us at executivesecretariat@ntsb.gov. If your response and supporting documentation together exceed 10 megabytes, e-mail us at the same address for instructions.
Updated January 2, 2024
