By Dennis Jones, NTSB Managing Director
In my recent blog post, I talked about the NTSB’s visit to South Africa as part of the US Department of Transportation’s Safe Skies for Africa (SSFA) program. Last week, the NTSB team returned to Africa—this time, to the east African nation of Kenya—in continued support of the SSFA program, the aviation safety capacity-building initiative that includes collaboration between African countries and several US government agencies. In Kenya, as in South Africa, we once again shared investigative lessons learned with more than 150 air safety investigators, aviation trainers and operators, government officials, and safety advocates from Kenya and countries in the surrounding region.
I was particularly excited about this trip because I first traveled to Kenya for accident investigation purposes 20 years ago, and later, based in the capital city of Nairobi, I worked to implement the NTSB’s SSFA program responsibilities. The goal of the SSFA program in Kenya was to help the country achieve FAA Category 1 status and pave the way for direct scheduled commercial air service between the United States and Kenya. The NTSB’s contribution toward this goal was to help Kenya’s accident investigation program meet international standards in accordance with the provisions of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO’s) Annex 13. Our activities included working with the Air Accident Investigation Division of Kenya (AAID) to develop its program, which included on-the-job investigator training; establishing policy, procedures, and practices for the organization; and producing memoranda of understanding between AAID and other domestic government agencies. The NTSB partnered with ICAO as part of the SSFA program to conduct aircraft accident investigation workshops throughout Africa; the first such event was held in Nairobi in 2007.
It took some time but, thanks to Kenya’s painstaking and diligent efforts, and the assistance provided by the SSFA program, Kenya achieved an FAA Category 1 rating in February 2017. Consequently, US and Kenya air carriers can now, with the approval of their respective regulatory agencies, travel between the two countries. Kenya Airways, Kenya’s national carrier, will launch its inaugural flight to the United States, destined to JFK International Airport in New York, in October 2018.
Although Kenya’s government is focused on improving aviation safety, the country—and, more broadly, the continent—still faces challenges that the region’s stakeholders are dedicated to overcoming. General aviation (GA) safety issues have been formidable in the region, just as they are in the United States, and we sought to share some of our experience addressing this issue. Further, through the SSFA initiative, NTSB representatives have recognized other modal transportation safety issues and safety advocacy opportunities for future consideration as the agency formulates its international scope of activities.
After accompanying the NTSB team to South Africa last month, I was fully confident in its ability to conduct the workshop in Nairobi. The team was composed of professionals representative of the superb workforce at the NTSB, and they delivered powerful presentations sharing lessons learned.
Shamicka Fulson, a program manager in the Office of the Managing Director, coordinated the development of the workshops in South Africa and Kenya. She delivered opening remarks and provided an overview of the agency and the SSFA program to begin the workshop in Nairobi.
Clint Crookshanks, an aerospace engineer in the Office of Aviation Safety, facilitated a workshop related to identifying common aviation safety lexicon. He reviewed different accident case studies with the audience and discussed ways to interpret the generalized and vague definitions often found in aviation investigations, such as “substantial damage to aircraft,” or the distinction between an “accident” and an “incident.”
Luke Schiada, Deputy Chief of Aviation Safety for the Eastern Region, presented accident case studies that highlighted international cooperation. Luke told the audience that he believed “international cooperation is, in large part, about building relationships and trust.” He stressed the importance of interacting with and learning from the collective knowledge and experiences of participants in settings like the SSFA workshops. I can’t agree more; after all, we can’t improve within unless we are willing and able to learn from without. Even sharing enables learning and growth.
Dennis Hogenson, Deputy Regional Chief of Aviation Safety for the Western Pacific Region, focused on GA safety improvements. He pointed out that, like Africa, the United States is seeing a high incidence of GA crashes. He told his audience that, while airline accidents have become rare, GA accidents account for most aviation fatalities. In many of our GA accident investigations, we’ve discovered that pilots didn’t have the adequate knowledge, skills, or recurrent training to fly safely. Dennis encouraged his African counterparts to initiate more training and increase awareness of technology that can help prevent these tragedies; this is something we continue to strive to do in the United States via our Most Wanted List issue addressing loss-of-control in flight.
Nicholas Worrell, Chief of the Safety Advocacy Division in the Office of Safety 
Recommendations and Communications, urged attendees—most of whom were investigators—to go beyond investigations to see real improvements in safety. The work doesn’t end with the report findings issued after the investigation; the work to improve safety just begins, he said. African safety organizations need to develop advocacy efforts and strategies to ensure their safety recommendations are implemented. Nick encouraged the audience to look to some of Kenya’s most notable leaders, like Jomo Kenyatta, political activist and Kenya’s first president, and Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize winner, both of whom saw a need for and executed effective advocacy to improve laws, policies, and practices.
The goal of our visit to Kenya was to continue fostering the development of a safer aviation transportation system in East Africa. It is integral to our mission at the NTSB to share globally what we have learned from 51 years of safety investigations. As the NTSB team supporting the SSFA program has shown, improving transportation safety is a collaborative process that doesn’t end at our borders.
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