National Transportation Safety Board

Investigations versus the $81.9 million award ledger

NTSB probable-cause reports are the agency’s public product. USAspending awards are not. $81,864,654.36 through FY2026 is what the Board obligated on federal awards—laboratories, wreckage storage, IT, training, facilities, and other instruments tagged to CGAC 424. A year with more major investigations does not automatically raise this total. A lab-equipment vehicle can raise it in a quiet accident year.

Three hundred forty-five awards against $81.9 million implies about $237,289 per award. That mid mean on a mid count fits an investigative body that buys technical support in many modest instruments rather than one giant operations contract. The packet has no median and no split by transportation mode.

Accident data lives in NTSB databases, not here

Aviation accident dockets, highway crash reports, and marine casualty files are NTSB (and sister-agency) statistical systems. They are not the 345 USAspending rows. Mixing fatalities with obligation dollars would treat a vendor invoice as if it were a safety outcome.

Investigator salaries generally never appear as awards. The $81,864,654.36 understates the Board’s full operating cost if a reader expected the award file to equal the appropriation. It is complete as an award ledger.

Questions

How much has the NTSB obligated on USAspending?

The National Transportation Safety Board shows $81,864,654.36 in obligations through FY2026 across 345 awards. Awarding-agency CGAC 424 is the filter. The total is not a count of accident investigations. USAspending.gov records this as awarding-agency obligations through FY2026, not cash outlays. The live table for CGAC 424 is the source for the current 345-award book.

What is the average NTSB award?

Dividing $81,864,654.36 by 345 awards yields about $237,289. The packet has no median and no split by aviation, rail, highway, marine, or pipeline support. Technical and administrative instruments share the same mean. That figure uses only the packet totals. The extract has no median and no contract-versus-assistance split. FY2026 is the warehouse cutoff, not a single-year appropriation.

What is agency code 424?

424 is the USAspending awarding-agency CGAC identifier for the NTSB. SpendingVault uses it in /agencies/424/. DOT modal administrations use different codes and different award books. SpendingVault URLs under the agency path filter to that CGAC identifier. It is an accounting tag, not a quality score. Totals on this page are obligations through FY2026.

Does the state table show where accidents happened?

No. The state table for agency 424 shows USAspending geography on the 345 awards—recipient or place-of-performance fields. Accident locations live in NTSB investigation files, not in this obligation roll-up. Outlays are unpublished in this packet, so this page does not estimate cash already paid. Refresh the agency page after USAspending updates rather than treating the current stock as frozen.