Washington, DC, May 24, 2021 – The Air Charter Safety Foundation (acsf.aero), a non-profit membership organization devoted to advancing the cause of aviation safety in nearly every facet of the industry, today announced its enormous debt of gratitude to Robert L. Sumwalt III, the outgoing Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. Chairman Sumwalt recently announced that he will step down from his position on June 30th. Sumwalt has been an NTSB board member since 2006, and has served as the agency's 14th chairman since 2017, after being nominated by President Donald J. Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. ACSF Chair Bryan Burns spoke gratefully of Sumwalt’s dedication to and advancement of aviation safety throughout his long tenure on the NTSB board. “Chairman Sumwalt’s unwavering commitment and passion for safety has had a major impact on our organization, the Air Charter Safety Foundation,” he said. “His service has benefited us in countless ways, including being an advocate for improving safety in the Part 135 air charter industry.” Burns spoke almost reverentially about Sumwalt, praising his leadership and the particularly high standards he set for his oversight of transportation safety in the U.S. “He was always looking out for the Part 135 charter end user and how best to educate passengers on safety,” Burns said. “His vision was to take a page out of the airline industry safety record and align it with the charter industry, which I think was one of his most meaningful initiatives.” He continued, “Overall, Chairman Sumwalt has been a huge supporter of ACSF, with the mutual interest of moving the safety needle throughout the charter community. In fact, he’s spoken at the ACSF Safety Symposium several times over the past 14 years.”
Distinguished Service to Safety
Sumwalt’s background and career bespeak his singular focus on transportation safety over several decades. He was a pilot for 32 years, 24 of which were as an airline pilot with Piedmont Airlines and US Airways. After his airline career, he joined SCANA, a Fortune 500 energy company, where he managed its corporate aviation department. Over his career, he logged over 14,000 flight hours and earned type ratings in five aircraft. Earlier in his career, Sumwalt worked on special assignment to the US Airways Flight Safety Department, where he was involved in the development of numerous airline-safety programs. He served long and diligently on the US Airways Flight Operational Quality Assurance Monitoring Team. For 17 years, Sumwalt served as an air safety representative for the Air Line Pilots Association, for which he chaired its Human Factors and Training Group. He was a co-founder of that organization's Critical Incident Response Program, which provides guidance to airline personnel involved in traumatic events, such as accidents. From 1991 to 1999, Sumwalt conducted aviation-safety research as a consultant to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, where he studied flight-crew human factors. Throughout his career, Sumwalt has written extensively on aviation-safety matters, having published over 90 articles and papers. He also co-authored a book on aircraft accidents, chapters of which pertained to aircraft accident investigations. In 2003, joined the faculty of the University of Southern California's Aviation Safety and Security Program, where he was the primary human factors instructor. He was sworn in as the 37th member of the National Transportation Safety Board on August 21, 2006, whereupon President George W. Bush designated him as Vice Chairman of the board for a two-year term. From that point up unto the present, he has been reappointed to to the top NTSB leadership position by both Presidents Obama and Trump. Respectively, in 2003 and 2005, in recognition of his contributions to the aviation industry, Sumwalt received the Flight Safety Foundation's Laura Taber Barbour Award and ALPA's Air Safety Award. He is a 2009 inductee into the South Carolina Aviation Hall of Fame. Honoring his accomplishments, Sumwalt was awarded an honorary Doctor in Science degree from the University of South Carolina, and an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
