"NASA chief says agency does not put airline profits above air travelers' safety"

Thursday, October 25, 2007

NASA Chief Says Agency Does Not Put Airline Profits Above Air Travelers'
Safety  
...commercial interests ahead of public safety
By RITA BEAMISH
The Associated Press


NASA's top official expressed regret Wednesday over his agency's stated
reason for refusing to make public a survey on air safety problems through
the eyes of the nation's pilots. He dismissed any idea that the space agency
would put commercial interests ahead of public safety.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said he disagrees with a senior
official's written reason for refusing to turn over the results of the $8.5
million pilot survey to The Associated Press. That official, associate
administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, told the AP that the information, if
publicized, could undermine public confidence in the airlines and could
affect the airlines' profits.

"This rationale was based on case law, but I do not agree with the way it
was written," Griffin said in a statement Wednesday. "I regret the
impression that NASA was in any way trying to put commercial interests ahead
of public safety. That was not and will never be the case."

Griffin's spokesman, David Mould, said the space agency is still evaluating
whether the survey results will be made public. A top NASA official flew
this week to NASA Ames Research Center in California, where the survey
project was conducted, to review the matter. Mould said the decision rests
on whether the law requires that it be kept secret, or whether the legal
rationale simply was provided as a way to keep it under wraps at the request
of agency officials.

The AP had sought to obtain the survey data, which includes 24,000
interviews with commercial and private pilots, over 14 months under the
Freedom of Information Act.

Luedtke's final rejection to the AP said: "Release of the requested data,
which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public
confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general
aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey."

Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird
strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government
monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who
was not authorized to discuss them publicly.

The revelations this week prompted the House Science and Technology
Committee to launch an investigation into NASA's decisions, with a public
hearing scheduled for next Wednesday.

Griffin's statement came as several other members of Congress turned up the
heat, demanding that NASA release information about the survey, which ran
for nearly four years before being shut down.

"We need the information for the safety of the flying public," Sen. Bill
Nelson, D-Fla., chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation
subcommittee on space and aeronautics, said Wednesday.

Nelson and committee member Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., wrote to NASA
demanding that all records on the project be preserved until the committee
issues a formal subpoena for a possible investigation or directs otherwise.

Lawmakers from the House Science and Technology committee also wrote to the
contractor that conducted NASA's survey, Battelle Memorial Institute,
directing it retain all original documents and copies, after learning that
NASA had ordered those documents returned and copies deleted from Battelle's
computers.

Battelle spokeswoman Katy Delaney said Wednesday that the directive was in
keeping with the company's contract, which is ending this month and had
required it to return all related materials to NASA as part of the close-out
procedure.

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