NTSB Part 830 (Accident & Incident Reporting)

49 CFR Part 830 governs when and how an aircraft operator must tell the National Transportation Safety Board about an accident or incident. It sits with the NTSB rather than the FAA because the Board is the independent agency that investigates transportation accidents; Part 830 is therefore distinct from the FAA's own occurrence and safety-reporting programs. The rule has four functional parts: definitions (830.2), immediate notification (830.5), preservation of wreckage and records (830.10), and the written report (830.15).

The definitions in 830.2 are the heart of the rule because they decide which duties apply. An aircraft accident is an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, taking place between the time any person boards with the intention of flight and the time all such persons have disembarked, in which any person suffers death or serious injury or the aircraft receives substantial damage. Serious injury is defined by objective thresholds: hospitalization for more than 48 hours beginning within 7 days of the injury; a fracture of any bone except simple fractures of fingers, toes, or the nose; severe hemorrhages or nerve, muscle, or tendon damage; injury to an internal organ; or second- or third-degree burns, or any burns affecting more than 5 percent of the body surface. Substantial damage means damage or failure that adversely affects the structural strength, performance, or flight characteristics of the aircraft and that would normally require major repair or replacement of the affected component; the rule then expressly excludes a list of things that do not count — engine failure or damage limited to one engine, bent fairings or cowling, dented skin, small punctured holes, ground damage to rotor or propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels, tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips. An incident is an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, that affects or could affect the safety of operations.

Immediate notification under 830.5 is required for every accident and for a specific list of serious incidents even when no one is hurt and the aircraft is not badly damaged. That list includes a flight-control-system malfunction or failure; a crewmember unable to perform normal duties because of injury or illness; an in-flight fire; an aircraft collision in flight; property damage other than to the aircraft estimated to exceed a set dollar threshold; certain events involving large or turbine-powered aircraft such as an inability to control the aircraft, a released drag chute, or an engine-containment failure; a release of all or a portion of a propeller blade in flight (excluding those caused solely by ground contact); and the loss of an aircraft that is overdue and believed to have been involved in an accident. Notification is made to the nearest NTSB office by the most expeditious means available and must include the aircraft identification, owner and operator, pilot, point of departure and intended destination, position, persons aboard, extent of injury and damage, and a description of the event.

Under 830.10 the operator is responsible for preserving the wreckage, cargo, mail, and records — and any recording devices — until the NTSB takes custody or releases them, disturbing them only to protect life, rescue the injured, or prevent further damage. Finally, 830.15 requires the operator to file a written report on the prescribed form within 10 days of an accident, or within 7 days if an overdue aircraft is still missing; a report on a listed incident is filed only if the Board later requests it. Part 830 is a reporting-and-preservation duty; it is not itself an enforcement or certificate action, and it stands apart from the confidential, non-punitive FAA occurrence programs.

Every flight school and flying club needs a clear, written internal procedure for Part 830, because the immediate-notification duty falls on the operator and the clock starts at the moment of the event — not after the paperwork is sorted out. Staff and instructors should be able to recognize when an occurrence crosses the accident or listed-incident threshold, know who makes the NTSB call, and understand that the wreckage and any onboard recordings must be left undisturbed. Confusing Part 830's mandatory reporting with the FAA's voluntary safety-reporting programs is a common and consequential mistake: the former is a legal duty owed to the Board, the latter are confidential programs aimed at learning from lower-level occurrences.

Part 830 also connects to a school's broader safety-management system. An occurrence that meets the accident definition triggers the external reporting duty, while the far larger population of hazards, near-misses, and minor events feeds the internal safety-reporting and just-culture process. A school that treats the two as complementary — reporting to the NTSB exactly what the rule requires while capturing everything else internally for analysis — protects both its regulatory standing and its learning culture, and keeps its FAA relationship on the constructive footing the compliance program is designed to encourage.

Aviatize's safety management module gives a school one place to log occurrences, classify them against the Part 830 accident and listed-incident thresholds, and drive the internal review, corrective action, and record-keeping that a serious event demands — while keeping the far larger stream of routine hazard reports flowing into the same analysis pipeline.

Because the digital data and records module keeps event records, training histories, and maintenance status together and time-stamped, a school can quickly assemble the aircraft, pilot, and operational information the NTSB notification calls for, and preserve an auditable trail that supports both its own investigation and any subsequent FAA interaction.