US safety board needs more funding for rail, air safety probes, chair says

The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board will tell the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday the agency needs more funding and warn cuts could put probes into aviation and rail accidents at risk. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy will tell a committee hearing, in written testimony seen by Reuters, that funding levels in a Senate bill "would require us to reduce staffing levels and would degrade our mission readiness for critical safety investigations". Those probes include a February 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment in Ohio and another into the Jan. 5 mid-panel panel blowout of a new Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft. "It is critical for the agency to have additional resources to respond to events," Homendy's testimony says. "We owe it to the families of those involved, to the communities where events occurred, and to the traveling public to find out what happened, why it happened, and to make recommendations to help ensure it never happens again." Homendy says she expects President Joe Biden next week to request $150m for NTSB for the 2025 budget year, up from $145m proposed for this year. A Senate bill would authorize $145m for the NTSB next year, $5m less than what Biden is expected to seek. Homendy says the NTSB, with 230 investigators currently, needs 50 additional employees for full staffing including 16 aviation investigators and 10 highway investigators as well as another $2.4m to replace aging and obsolete equipment "critical to conducting robust and comprehensive investigations."<br/>