"NASA Releases Heavily-Redacted Airline Safety Study"

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

NASA Releases Heavily-Redacted Airline Safety Study
Omissions Make Results of Taxpayer-Funded Survey Extremely Hard to Analyze
By Del Quentin Wilber
The Washington (DC) Post


NASA today released partial results of a massive air safety survey of
airline pilots who repeatedly complained about fatigue and problems with air
traffic controllers, airport security and the layouts of runways and
taxiways. 

Reacting to criticism about its initial decision to withhold the database
for fear of harming the airlines' bottom lines, NASA released a heavily
redacted version of the survey on its Web site this afternoon. But the space
and aeronautics agency published the information in a way that made it
extremely difficult to analyze. 

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told reporters in a conference call that
the agency had no plans to study the database for trends. He said NASA
conducted the survey only to determine whether gathering information from
pilots in such a way was worthwhile. 

Despite the lack of analysis by NASA scientists, Griffin said there was
nothing in the database that should concern air travelers. "It's hard for me
to see any data the traveling public would care about or ought to care
about," he said. "We were asked to release the data and we did." 

The NASA database, which included more than 10,000 pages of information, was
based on extensive telephone polling of airline and general aviation pilots
about incidents including engine failures, bird strikes, fires onboard
planes and encounters with severe turbulence. The survey cost about $11
million and was conducted from 2001 through 2004. 

The survey included narrative responses by pilots, but NASA released the
information in such a way as to make it impossible to determine details of
what the pilots were describing. The narratives sometimes consist of terse
answers such as "fatigue" and "crew rest." 

Others are slightly more extensive. 

"Pilots asleep on flight deck is a problem," one pilot said. Another
suggested that survey workers ask pilots how often they fall asleep in the
cockpit. 

The reports included discussions of pilots' difficulties in talking to
controllers in busy airspace. Air traffic control "capacity inadequate to
handle traffic load," one pilot reported. 

"There are too many people on the frequency and they are causing a safety
problem," another pilot responded. 

NASA refused to release the data several months ago in response to a request
by a wire service. At the time, it told the Associated Press that
publication of the survey's results might affect the public's confidence in
the airlines. NASA was roundly criticized by members of Congress and
aviation safety experts for refusing to publish the survey. 

Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House Committee on Science and
Technology, said the agency should not have redacted so much of the data and
then released it in a format that made it difficult to analyze. He promised
more hearings into the matter. 

"It was just an effort to get something out the door rather than a serious
effort to provide transparency," Gordon said. "It was heavily redacted, and
there is not much usefulness to the data until we get more information." 

Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board,
also criticized the way NASA released its database. "When a government
agency is not transparent with the American people, particularly on an issue
like safety, they are not fulfilling their responsibilities and earning
their pay," Hall said. 

The debate over the database comes as U.S. commercial aviation is enjoying
its safest period in history, according to officials with the Federal
Aviation Administration. The last major fatal U.S. air crash occurred in
August 2006. 

FAA officials said they had no plans to launch an independent study of the
survey. But the FAA is looking at ways to "integrate the data with the
existing data we have," said Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman. 

Outside safety experts said analyzing the database could provide helpful
clues about potentially dangerous trends. "I hope that somebody will have
the initiative to crunch the data and be able to put together trends," said
John Cox, a former investigator with the Air Line Pilots Association, a
major pilots union.


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