American Airlines Pilots Refuse Recorded Interview With Safety Board

But the safety board said in a statement that recording interviews was a “longstanding practice” and that its staff had recorded interviews in “numerous past investigations involving commercial airlines.” The board said it had told the American Airlines pilots that a court reporter would also record their testimony and provide them with a transcript that they could review for accuracy.

The American Airlines crew have seven days to respond to the subpoenas, the agency said.

It said it had reviewed written statements from the Delta crew, adding that “their statements contain sufficient information for N.T.S.B. investigative purposes given their role in the incident.”

The cockpit recordings in both planes were “overwritten,” the safety board said, meaning that they were taped over, leaving no audio record of what pilots in either plane said to one another during the incident. The equipment that records cockpit conversations is designed to overwrite itself after two hours.

In its statement, the safety board noted that it recommended in 2018 that the Federal Aviation Administration require that cockpit voice recorders be capable of recording at least 25 hours of audio.

Last week, a Southwest plane and a FedEx jet narrowly avoided a collision at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/business/ntsb-american-airlines-jfk-runway-incident.html