Interactive map · Open data
NTSB unmanned aircraft accident reports, 2006–2023
Every NTSB accident and incident report involving an unmanned aircraft from April 2006 to August 2023, placed on a map and classified into ICAO occurrence categories. Click a marker for the report details; use the legend to filter by category and the slider to narrow the years.
All 27 reports as a table (for keyboard and screen-reader users, or to copy)
| Report | Date | Location | Category | Aircraft | Damage | Injuries |
|---|
About this map
Where the data comes from
The reports were retrieved from the NTSB’s CAROL database by filtering for unmanned aircraft; the report number shown in each popup is the NTSB’s own identifier. Each report’s narrative was classified into an ICAO ADREP occurrence category with a large language model and then checked by hand. The method, the category definitions and the discussion of what the pattern means for UAS safety policy are in the paper below; the classification scripts are open.
- Pik, E., Garcia, J. S. D. (2025). Utilizing artificial intelligence for National Transportation Safety Board unmanned aerial vehicle accident analysis and categorization. International Journal of AI for Materials and Design. DOI: 10.36922/ijamd.8544 · PDF
- Classification scripts: GPT-4 assisted categorization of NTSB UAV accident reports
- Related guide: Cybersecurity for eVTOL and UAS airworthiness
Two caveats. The NTSB investigates only a fraction of unmanned aircraft events, mostly larger aircraft and collisions with crewed aircraft, so these 27 reports are not a measure of how often small drones crash. And the locations are the reported accident sites, placed at city or airfield precision, not exact coordinates. One report (DCA12CA023) is from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and sits far off the main map.