Who runs the deal?
So, several posters here all have railed against the evident gaps in flight safety protocols (meaning all the faults, gaps, deficiencies, deficits, propensities to error, and so on, attributed to, or proven to have been factors in, mishaps).
Who has oversight of NTSB in its work, so as to assure that the investigation and investigatory process reach all the evident concerns, issues and questions? Is it the NTSB hierarchy itself? The Congress (choke!)?, and if so, which committee/sub-committee has the staff who actually understand this? Or is it an informal sort of thing, old hands who keep tabs on what's happening and make sure their concerns are carried forward and carried on? I am not, readback/repeat not, casting aspersions on the NTSB, but does it not seem that the technical aspects of the flight safety protocol (again, a word I am using to represent the aggregation of all the safety dynamics iterated on this and other threads) may be getting just a little....bit....ahead of the customary NTSB methods, not withstanding its very cool, very efficacious track record? Let me restate the query this way: do you have the sense that after you read the eventual Board report, you'll be saying, "well done, as far as it goes....but what about the larger systemic concerns, issues, questions"?
* Not * a driver, but intensely interested in aviation safety, kind of like sorta, as if I were running for U.S. Public Aviation Safety Advocate as a delegate to ICAO this fall (Sister Belinda, pray with me that the Brits don't have some putz-icle acronym meaning for PASA....)