WASHINGTON, March 5 (Reuters) -

The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board will

tell the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday the agency needs

more funding and warn cuts could put probes into aviation and

rail accidents at risk.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy will tell a committee hearing,

in written testimony seen by Reuters, that funding levels in a

Senate bill "would require us to reduce staffing levels and

would degrade our mission readiness for critical safety

investigations".

Those probes include a February 2023 Norfolk Southern ( NSC )

train derailment in Ohio and another into the Jan. 5

mid-panel panel blowout of a new Alaska Airlines Boeing

737 MAX 9 aircraft.

"It is critical for the agency to have additional resources

to respond to events," Homendy's testimony says. "We owe it to

the families of those involved, to the communities where events

occurred, and to the traveling public to find out what happened,

why it happened, and to make recommendations to help ensure it

never happens again."

Homendy says she expects President Joe Biden next week to

request $150 million for NTSB for the 2025 budget year, up from

$145 million proposed for this year.

A Senate bill would authorize $145 million for the NTSB next

year, $5 million less than what Biden is expected to seek.

Homendy says the NTSB, with 230 investigators currently,

needs 50 additional employees for full staffing including 16

aviation investigators and 10 highway investigators as well as

another $2.4 million to replace aging and obsolete equipment

"critical to conducting robust and comprehensive

investigations."

Homendy's testimony noted the board has six open

investigations from 2023 into runway incursion incidents and she

has called for more technology to prevent near miss incidents.

In February 2023, a FedEx ( FDX ) cargo plane and a

Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 that came within about 115

feet (35 meters) of each other in Austin in poor visibility

conditions could have been a "terrible tragedy," Homendy said

last year.

The NTSB has over 1,000 open safety recommendations across

all investigations, Homendy's testimony says.

"We meet the challenges that come with increasing growth and

innovation in transportation," Homendy said. "It is critical for

the agency to have additional resources to respond to events

without affecting our timeliness, the quality of our work, or

our independence."

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)