The German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Investigation (German: Bundesstelle für Flugunfalluntersuchung, BFU) is the German federal agency responsible for air accident investigation.
The purpose of BFU is to find out the causes of air accidents and how they can be prevented. The BFU facility is located in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony. The agency is subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Transport.
West Germany had joined the Convention on International Civil Aviation including the standards and recommended practices on aircraft accident and incident investigation (Annex 13) in 1956. Initially subordinate to the neighbouring Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (Federal Aviation Office), the Bureau of Aviation Accidents Investigation according to a recommendation by the International Civil Aviation Organization in 1980 was put under the direct authority of the Federal Ministry of Transport. The BFU was formally established as an upper-level federal agency in 1998.
Famous quotes containing the words german, federal, bureau and/or accidents:
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)
“If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better.”
—native American belief, quoted by D. Jenness in “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” Bulletin no. 133, Bureau of American Ethnology (1943)
“Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)