What’s discouraging about the National Transportation Safety Board’s “Most Wanted” list is that the same safety recommendations keep popping up each year—sort of like a bureaucratic replay of the film Groundhog Day. Problem is, the consequences are anything but amusing.

Planes crash, and people die, when things stay static. And that’s the state of affairs right now. Five of NTSB’s Most Wanted safety improvements elicited an “unacceptable response” on the part of the federal bureaucracy, most notably the Federal Aviation Administration.

First, understand that the Safety Board investigates accidents and incidents. Then, it recommends fixes. It has no regulatory power. Zilch. That resides with FAA.

And FAA’s responses, according to NTSB, leave a lot to be desired. Chapter and verse, here’s what the Safety Board asked for, and what it got:

Reduce the danger to aircraft flying in icing conditions. Response: unacceptable.

NTSB concludes FAA “has not adopted a systematic and proactive approach to the certification and operational issues of turbine-engine-driven transport-category airplane icing.”

Perhaps the most infamous icing instance in recent memory was the 1994 crash in Roselawn, Indiana of an American Eagle propjet. 68 people died. More than 10 years after the Safety Board issued a set of recommendations, FAA “has yet to issue any of the operational, design or testing requirement revisions” asked for.

This issue is about to become more critical as winter rushes in.

Eliminate flammable fuel/air vapors in fuel tanks on transport category aircraft. Response: acceptable, progressing slowly.

This is the TWA 800 initiative. Forget about conspiracy theorists. It was a mechanical flaw that brought down the big Boeing back in July 1996 off Long Island. NTSB says center wing fuel tank explosions have killed 346 people. In the 10 years since Flight 800, there have been three more such explosions—none of them nearly as deadly.

NTSB says FAA is moving to make things better, noting that the agency’s “recent actions indicate positive movement, particularly in the development of a practical fuel-tank inerting system.” Consider, Boeing is integrating a flammability reduction system into the design of its new 787 Dreamliner. The company has also designed, and delivered, a system for use in 747s and 737NG (Next Generation) jets. The European Safety Agency (EASA) plans to certify the gargantuan Airbus A380 with such a setup.

Perhaps most important, FAA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) last year requiring installation of flammability reduction systems in commercial aircraft. The agency is evaluating public comment to that NPRM before drafting a final rule.

It’s taken 10 years, but at last, there seems to be some real progress.

Stop runway incursions and ground collisions of aircraft. Response: unacceptable. Frequent Flyer has been writing about this problem for years, yet still it persists. As air traffic increases, expect things to get worse. How’s this for a nightmare almost realized: July 2006, O’Hare International. A United 737 and an Atlas Air 747 cargo craft avoid one another by 35 feet. The 747 had been cleared to land as the 737 was cleared to take off—on an intersecting runway. Had the pilot of the seven-three not broken ground early there would have been hell to pay.

Although FAA has made improvements, NTSB says, “The runway incursion rate in the United States has not appreciably changed over the past four years, and now stands at about 5.2 runway incursions per 1,000,000 [control] tower operations.”

Too high.

NTSB advocates information provided to flight crews as soon as possible. “The issue is one of reaction time,” the Safety Board says. The current warning setup is called AMASS—the Airport Areas Safety System. Problem is, it’s inherently too slow. “After an AMASS alert,” says NTSB says, “the controller must determine the nature of the problem, determine the location, identify the aircraft involved, and determine what action to take. Only after (Frequent Flyer’s emphasis) all these determinations have been made can appropriate warnings or instructions be issued.”

What NTSB wants is direct warnings to pilots. There’s an airborne  plane-to-plane system that does that now. It’s called TCAS (Traffic Alert/Collision Avoidance System) and it works wonderfully. The controller is out of the loop. Information is passed from airplane to airplane. Needed is a ground-bound version.

Improve audio and data recorders, and require cockpit video recorders. Response: unacceptable.

Cockpit voice recorders (CVRs) and digital flight data recorders (DFDRs) are invaluable in determining the probable cause of an accident. But NTSB says CVRs don’t record long enough, that they can go down when power is cut to the cockpit. The Safety Board wants CVRs to record at least two hours of audio, and would like to see those machines equipped with back-up power. Such a power source would have given investigators a more immediate insight into what happened in the September 1998 crash of a Swissair MD-11 at Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia.

The real controversial issue is fitting cockpits with video recorder. The Safety Board says that would help investigators, “solve complex accidents.” Pilots balk at the proposal as violative of privacy.

Reduce accidents and incidents caused by human fatigue. Response: unacceptable.

NTSB wants FAA to “Establish scientifically based hours-of-service regulations that set limits on hours of service, provide predictable work and rest schedules, and consider human sleep and rest requirements.”

FAA apparently sees the need for reform. Back in 1995 it issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to update flight and duty regulations for airline pilots. Eleven years later, the regs still haven’t been changed. “The FAA has attempted on three occasions to reach consensus with the industry,” the Safety Board says. To no avail. Meanwhile, the bleary-eyed demon waits, waiting to materialize in a mass of mangled metal.

Improve crew resource management. Response: unacceptable.

Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) revolutionized airline safety in the late 1980s and early 1990s, fostering a climate of shared responsibility and sensible division of labor between captain and first officer. Now, NTSB wants the ethic extended beyond the cockpits of larger craft, and into the precincts of what’s called Part 135 “on-demand” air taxi operators.

As more frequent flyers flee the security strictures attendant to flying traditional commercial airlines, they’re flocking to part 135 operators.

The Safety Board wants on-demand charter operators that fly with two pilots up front to “establish and implement an FAA-approved CRM training program,” one that fosters a climate of safety.

While NTSB says FAA agrees in principle with the recommendation, “no discernable progress has been made.”

Those of us who’ve followed aviation safety over the past few decades know that regulatory reform is writ large on the faces of tombstones. The higher the body count, the more seriously the bureaucracy takes things.

As the National Transportation Safety Board might say, Response: unacceptable.