How to Use the NTSB Accident Database to Look Up an Aviation Accident

What You Will Find When You Open an NTSB Record

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is the federal agency that investigates civil transportation accidents, including aviation accidents. Its aviation records are searchable through CAROL, short for Comprehensive Aviation Reporting Online. The NTSB's main website, ntsb.gov, also links to investigations and reports.

Federal regulation describes what these investigations are for. Under 49 C.F.R. § 831.4, the NTSB investigates "to determine the facts, conditions, and circumstances relating to an accident." It uses those results to determine one or more probable causes and to issue safety recommendations. The same regulation says the NTSB "is required to report on the facts and circumstances of accidents it investigates." It also says an investigation may produce "a report or brief of the NTSB's conclusions," as well as factual records, safety recommendations and other safety information.

The records in the database fall into a few types:

• A preliminary report is the NTSB's early account of an accident. It is written while the investigation is still under way.
• A factual report collects the facts investigators gathered.
• A final report states the NTSB's probable cause, which is its conclusion about why the accident happened.

The database covers accidents and certain incidents. An accident is an event in which people are hurt or killed, or the aircraft is seriously damaged. An incident is a lesser safety event. The database covers civil aviation, not military flying.

For you, the record is the federal government's own account of what investigators found. It is not a news story and not an insurer's version of events. For a family, it is often the first official document that describes the flight at all, and knowing which type of record you are holding tells you how much weight its account of events can carry.

Where the Information in an NTSB Record Comes From

This guide relies only on the NTSB's own public records and the federal rules that govern them: 49 C.F.R. § 831.4, on what an investigation is, 49 C.F.R. § 831.13, on investigative information, and 49 U.S.C. § 1154, on how those records are treated in court. When you read a record, what you see is what the NTSB has published, not our interpretation of it.

49 C.F.R. § 831.13 explains what an investigation collects. It covers information about the accident, and information the NTSB compiles "such as photographs, visual representations of factual data, physical evidence from the scene of the accident, interview statements, wreckage documentation, flight data and cockpit voice recorder information, and surveillance video." It also covers information about the investigation's status. The same section says that anyone participating in the investigation must promptly provide this information to the NTSB, unless the NTSB authorizes them to keep it. Much of this material ends up in the investigation's NTSB docket, the file of factual records for one investigation.

We do not add facts, guess about causes, or rank aircraft, operators or manufacturers. If you are trying to understand what happened to you or a loved one, this means the record shows only what investigators have gathered so far. If the record is still preliminary, the photographs, statements and flight data may not yet be public.

Step 1 — Open the CAROL Query Tool

The first step is reaching the NTSB's query tool at data.ntsb.gov and choosing an aviation search. People often arrive there from ntsb.gov, which links to the agency's reports and investigations.

Some readers confuse CAROL with an FAA resource. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a separate agency. It writes and enforces flight rules, while the NTSB investigates accidents. The difference is explained further in NTSB vs. FAA. The FAA runs ASIAS, the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing system, at asip.faa.gov. ASIAS holds FAA safety data. It is not the NTSB's accident database, and it does not contain the NTSB's probable-cause findings.

If you are looking for the NTSB's account of a particular crash, CAROL is the place that holds it. Starting in the wrong database can leave a family believing no finding exists when it does.

Step 2 — Search Using the Details Your Family Already Knows

A person who survived a crash, or a relative who lost someone, often knows only the date and the place. That is usually a workable starting point. CAROL lets a search be narrowed by details that describe an event, including:

• the date or a range of dates;
• the location, such as the state;
• the aircraft's registration;
• the operator's name;
• the NTSB's own accident number.

An N-number is the registration number painted on a U.S. civil aircraft, which begins with the letter N. If a family has it, from a photo, a booking or a news account, it can narrow results quickly. The NTSB also assigns each event its own accident number, often the most direct way to reach a single record.

Exact spellings matter. An operator's name may be entered differently than a family expects, or an airport may be recorded under a nearby town. People who do not know the registration often start with the date and the state, then scan the results for the aircraft type and place they recognize. A wider date range can help where the exact day is uncertain. If you are searching on limited details, an empty or confusing results list may reflect the search terms rather than the absence of a record.

Some aircraft types already have their own pages on this site, such as Piper PA-28 accident records, which show how individual NTSB records read once they are found.

Step 3 — Open the Record and Identify Its Stage

Before reading the details, it helps to see which stage a record has reached, because the stage shapes what it can tell you.

A preliminary report is an early account. It sets out initial facts, such as the aircraft, the flight and what was known at the time. A preliminary report is not a finding of cause. It is written before the investigation is finished, and later work may add to or change the picture.

A factual report and the docket come next. They hold the material investigators gathered, of the kinds 49 C.F.R. § 831.13 describes, such as photographs, interview statements, wreckage documentation and flight data.

A final report is the NTSB's completed account. It contains the probable cause. Probable cause is the NTSB's determination of the factor or factors that caused the accident.

How long each stage takes varies. A simple accident may move quickly. A complex one may take far longer, sometimes years.

For a family, the stage often shapes how the record feels to read. A preliminary report can seem thin or incomplete, and that is what it is designed to be. An open investigation means the NTSB has not yet stated why the accident happened, so a preliminary report is not an answer about cause.

What the NTSB's Probable-Cause Finding Means for a Possible Claim

A final report's probable cause is the NTSB's conclusion. A report may also name contributing factors, the NTSB's term for elements it found played a secondary part in the accident. Both are conclusions about safety. Neither is a legal ruling.

The regulation says this directly. Under 49 C.F.R. § 831.4, NTSB investigations "are fact-finding proceedings with no adverse parties" and "are not conducted for the purpose of determining the rights, liabilities, or blame of any person or entity, as they are not adjudicatory proceedings."

Congress also limited how the reports are used in court. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(b), "No part of a report of the Board, related to an accident or an investigation of an accident, may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report."

The same statute also limits cockpit recordings. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(a), a party generally may not use discovery, the pretrial process of obtaining evidence, to get a cockpit recorder recording. A party also generally may not obtain transcript portions or still images the NTSB has not made public. The exceptions are narrow. A court may allow it after a private review, called an in camera review, if the public material is not enough for a fair trial. When it does, the court must issue a protective order limiting how the material is used.

None of this makes the report meaningless. A report can help an injured person, a family and an attorney understand the sequence of events and which records exist. Whether anyone is legally responsible is a separate question, decided under state tort law and product-liability law, which differ from state to state. Federal aviation rules and state injury law work as separate layers, as the aviation accident lawyer page describes.

If you are trying to understand how a probable-cause finding fits alongside a possible civil claim, you may want to consider a conversation with our attorney. It can cover the record you found, its stage and the details of the flight.

When a Search Returns Nothing — and What That Means for You

The database holds the NTSB's records of civil aviation events it investigates. Not every flight event appears in it.

Military aircraft accidents are outside the NTSB's civil records and are investigated by other bodies. An accident outside U.S. jurisdiction may also not appear in CAROL. The NTSB investigates accidents and certain incidents, not every safety event that happens in flight.

A search that returns nothing is therefore not proof that nothing happened. The event may fall outside the database. It may be recorded under a spelling, date or place the searcher did not expect. Or it may simply not be listed yet. If you find no record, or only a preliminary one, that says something about where the NTSB's process stands, not about whether your family has questions worth asking.

If you come across other sources, it helps to know what they are. The FAA's ASIAS system at asip.faa.gov holds FAA safety data, not NTSB findings. Aviation-safety.net is a private, non-government website that tracks accidents worldwide; what you read there is not an official record.

This guide also cannot decide several things. It does not determine fault or liability, set or calculate any deadline, or say what any claim may involve. It reports what the NTSB has published, at the stage the NTSB has reached.

How Limitation Periods and State Law Interact With What You Find

A statute of limitations is the period of time within which a civil claim must be filed in court. Wrongful death is a claim brought after a person dies because of someone else's wrongful act or neglect. It is usually brought by family members or the estate, as state law defines them.

These periods differ by state and by type of claim. Personal-injury and wrongful-death claims can carry different periods, and claims involving government entities may follow separate rules. No single period applies everywhere. As one example, the site's page on Texas aviation accident claims sets out Texas's own rule from its statute.

The NTSB's timeline and a state's limitation period run separately. Nothing in the federal investigation rules described on this page pauses or extends a state's deadline. A family waiting for a final report may find that it arrives long after the accident. When a deadline starts to run, and whether any exception applies, depends on the state's own law and the facts.

For many families, this is the moment when the question shifts from "what happened" to "what applies to us." A consultation can cover the date and place of the accident, the aircraft and operator involved, the stage of the NTSB record, and which state's law may matter.