NTSB Aviation Accident & Incident Scraper (CAROL)

Extract structured records from the NTSB CAROL Investigation Database — the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board's authoritative archive of investigated transportation accidents and incidents. With ~180,000 historical records covering aviation, highway, marine, pipeline, railroad, and hazardous materials, CAROL is the canonical safety-investigation dataset for the United States.

This Actor wraps CAROL's internal search API and returns clean, filterable JSON. Defaults pull aviation events (the largest mode), but every other NTSB mode is selectable.

Key Features

• All NTSB modes — Aviation (default), Highway, Marine, Pipeline, Railroad, Hazmat
• Event type filter — Accidents only, Incidents only, or both
• Geographic filters — State, country
• Date range — Filter by event date (MM/DD/YYYY)
• Severity filter — Highest injury level (Fatal, Serious, Minor, None)
• Aircraft / vehicle make — Substring match (e.g., Cessna, Boeing, Piper)
• Direct case URLs — Every record links back to the NTSB case docket on data.ntsb.gov
• No authentication required — Public NTSB CAROL API

Output Data Fields

Field	Description
ntsbNo	NTSB case number
eventType	Accident or Incident
eventDate	Event date
city / state / country	Event location
mode	Transportation mode
vehicleMake / vehicleModel	Aircraft / vehicle make and model
tailNumber	Aircraft registration (N-number)
highestInjuryLevel	Most severe injury (Fatal, Serious, Minor, None)
injuriesOnboard / injuriesOnGround	Injury counts
reportNumber	NTSB report number
reportType	Most recent report type (Final, Factual, Preliminary)
reportDate	Report issue date
docketPublishDate	Docket publication date
originalPublishedDate	Original publish date
hasSafetyRecommendation	Whether NTSB issued a safety recommendation
completionStatus	Investigation completion status
mkey / eventId	Internal NTSB identifiers
caseUrl	Direct link to the CAROL case page

How to Scrape NTSB Investigation Data

1. Open the NTSB Aviation Scraper on Apify Store
2. Select transportation mode (Aviation by default)
3. (Optional) Filter by state, date range, severity, aircraft make
4. Click Start — JSON records land in the default dataset

Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-result pricing. The CAROL API responds quickly even for large queries; a 5,000-record pull typically completes in well under 5 minutes.

Use Cases

• Insurance underwriting — Build accident-rate priors by aircraft model and operator
• Fleet safety analytics — Track incident history for specific make/model fleets
• Aviation law & litigation — Pull cases by aircraft, location, and date range
• Journalism & FOIA — Pre-screen NTSB cases before pulling full dockets
• AI safety assistants — Feed accident reports into a RAG pipeline for risk Q&A

Legal & Disclaimer

The NTSB CAROL database is a public U.S. Government resource. This Actor reads the same public API powering data.ntsb.gov; no authentication is bypassed. Records may be preliminary and subject to revision. Users are responsible for compliance with the NTSB Terms of Use. Data provided "as is" without warranty.