Glossary

The terms record pages and filters use, as Flight Findings uses them. Definitions follow the NTSB where it has one; groupings Flight Findings makes itself are named as such.

Accident

An occurrence in which someone is killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft is substantially damaged (the NTSB definition).

The NTSB counts an occurrence as an accident when it happens between boarding for flight and everyone leaving the aircraft, and results in death, serious injury or substantial damage.

Incident

An occurrence, other than an accident, that affects or could affect the safety of the flight.

Incidents are reported and investigated far less consistently than accidents, so the collection holds relatively few of them.

Event type

Accident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that.

Occurrence

Flight Findings' word for any event in the collection: accidents, incidents and events the sources do not classify.

Investigation status

How far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say.

Injury severity

Fatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less.

Operation

What kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government.

Flight Findings groups the NTSB's operation codes into these six. Foreign operators of airliners count as airlines; commercial flights in light aircraft count as air taxi and commuter.

VMC and IMC

Visual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments.

Light conditions

Daylight, dusk or dawn, or night at the time of the occurrence, as the investigation recorded it.

Flight rules

The regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code.

Phase of flight

The stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing.

Defining event

The single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead.

Also coded

Other events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event.

Kind of event

Flight Findings' grouping of the NTSB's coded events into kinds readers look for: fuel, wire strikes, loss of control, midair collisions and so on.

Aircraft damage

Destroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that.

Registration

The aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft.

Estimated position

Where a record gives no coordinates, the map places it at the named town or airport. Those planes are marked as estimated and can be kilometres off.

Unreviewed record

A record with little or nothing written about it yet: coded values only, not read by the narrative review. Hidden by default and not indexed by search engines.