Statement of Chairman Jim Hall
National Transportation Safety Board
May 7, 1998

The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a series of recommendations addressing safety concerns raised by its investigation of the crash of TWA flight 800 in July 1996. Most of them deal with the Board’s two-pronged approach of eliminating ignition sources in the fuel tanks of airliners while at the same time reducing to the maximum extent possible the flammability of vapors in those tanks.

I applaud the FAA’s announcement today that it will require certain inspections of Boeing 737s, 747s and 767s, and hope the action is a sign that government regulators are moving aggressively to do what they can to ensure that fuel tank explosions like we saw in TWA 800 – extremely rare to begin with – are even less likely to occur in the future.

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