Recent events should be “a call to action” for aircraft operators to review their organizations to ensure that deviations from policy or unsafe acts are brought into compliance, NTSB member Michael Graham told attendees at the 2025 Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) Safety Symposium this week. “It’s clear that while significant progress has been made, there’s always room for improvement,” he said.

Graham noted that companies should focus on building resilient operations—and that requires learning from the smallest of errors. “Major accidents can shake public trust in aviation, but minor incidents can, too. Each member of the aviation community—from operators to regulators to air traffic control, and everyone in between—plays a crucial role in maintaining public trust.”

He challenged attendees to never rest on the aviation safety record of the past but strive to be safer and more resilient each day. “Through collective effort and a commitment to continuous improvement, we can uphold the highest standards of safety and resilience.”

The last time he spoke at ACSF, two years ago, Graham said, “I had to address the elephant in the room. We had just had a year’s worth of Category A runway incursions in two months. And after that, we actually had two aircraft hit each other and, amazingly, nobody got hurt.”

But since then, a major Part 121 accident has occurred with more fatalities than have been seen since the mid-2000s. “And we had a major foreign, medical carrier with six lives lost in Philadelphia and 10 lives lost up in Alaska on a Part 135 accident,” he noted. So Graham said he needed to reiterate the same message from two years ago: “It’s time to get back to the basics here, folks. There’s a lot going on out there. You all know about it, but what are you doing about it?”

The aviation system supports nearly three million passengers and 45,000 flights every day, and every passenger deserves the highest level of safety and resilience, he said. “It’s our collective responsibility to deliver that. When a passenger boards one of your flights, that passenger is relinquishing their safety to you, your operation, and the entire aviation system.”

The aviation industry is built on public trust and reputation, he reminded. “Each of us in this room who celebrate the safety record of aviation today should remember all the tough lessons that those before us had to learn,” Graham added.

“We stand on the shoulders of those in safety who came before us and have a responsibility to not forget what they did to get us where we are today and carry the burden of maintaining that public trust moving forward. They say trust is the easiest thing in the world to lose and the hardest thing in the world to get back.”

Every person in a company’s operation, their competitors, and air traffic control will determine public trust in aviation. “The actions of one affect us all.”

To that end, Graham said that he’s had “heartburn” from the “sensationalized media environment that we’re in.”

He noted this coverage is now extending to many events that may not have previously received coverage. “Every time an airplane gets unstabilized and doesn’t go around at [KDCA/Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport], or the configuration doesn’t work right with the sequencing and ATC calls for an aircraft to do a go-around at a major airport like [KDCA], I don’t personally think we need to be hearing about it in the news.” Often, these situations show that the system is working.

“But the one that really bothers me is when we do have a major accident like we’ve seen here this year early this year. It’s within about an hour, maybe less, anymore, that the major media is all over this, and they have all their experts on camera right away…They’ve already solved it for you without any of the evidence, maybe just one videotape, and they’ve already got it figured out, and they’re already placing blame or fault on somebody.”

He cited as an example a couple of years ago when he was dispatched to a midair collision at the Wings Over Dallas Airshow. It occurred on a Saturday, but he didn’t arrive until Sunday morning.

“All I heard was that the [Bell] P-63 pilot flew into a [Boeing] B-17. It was his fault. How did they know that?” he asked. When he arrived on the scene, he had many questions, such as what was briefed, what aircraft was supposed to be on which show line, what was the altitude separation plan, and what were the directives.

“I don’t think any of the experts asked any of those questions,” he noted. Graham discovered there was no pre-brief separation plan, and the airshow relied on the real-time deconfliction plan of the air boss.

“This was a very flexible, fluid program, and basically, they were set up for failure from the very beginning. The pilots had geometry issues trying to see other airplanes.”

But for the suppositions made publicly in advance, he said, “It shows absolutely no compassion to the families of those who lost lives in this.”

He met with the families and found that, for the spouse of the P-63 pilot, “Not only had her world been turned upside down by the loss of her husband but she now carried the burden of the five lives in that B-17 because of what was being said in the media, and that is just wrong.”

Graham was asked about statements made, such as that of Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who reportedly suggested that a pilot should be grounded after not following air traffic control instructions.

He said he was bothered by such a statement but that this view didn’t start with the secretary. Rather, he began seeing a trend in that direction about two years ago or so. “I don’t know what happened with the compliance philosophy, but it’s kind of falling off to the side,” he said. “The FAA started going after pilots for a minor safety thing.”

Graham pointed to a recent case before the NTSB administrative law judges surrounding a close call involving a Learjet that took off in front of a regional airliner in Boston. The two pilots submitted NASA voluntary reporting forms.

The FAA handed down a 250-day suspension. The law judges overturned that, but the FAA appealed. “It’s very bothersome to me because nobody is going to want to submit [voluntary] reports.”

ACSF’s late Russ Lawton used to note that 90% of the foundation’s Aviation Safety Action Program reports were sole-source reports that no one would ever know about others, he recalled. “So I’m very concerned about that.”