The national transportation safe-ty Board website that publishes aviation accident reports (www.ntsb.govtsb/ Month.asp) recently made a small change to its format. Normally, reports pass through three stages. First there is the "Preliminary" report, which usually hits the website within days of the accident and contains a thumbnail account of whatever is known at the time. Next comes the "Factual," which is developed by the investigator(s) and includes a more complete narrative and whatever evidentiary detail has been uncovered. Finally, somebody decides what the "probable cause" of the accident was, and it is edited into the report. This version used to receive the rubric "Final," which I suppose meant final in the context of the NTSB's investigative process: work on the accident had come to an end. But somebody must have felt that the word suggested too absolute a confidence in the validity of the conclusion, because the category that used to be called "Final" is now more diffidently labeled "Probable cause." Thus, even completed accident investigations are in a sense left open.
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