WPost: Redacted Air-Traffic Safety Survey Released-NASA Downplays Pilots' Complaints

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/31/AR2007123101689.html?hpid=sec-business

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 1, 2008; Page D01

NASA yesterday released partial results of a massive air-safety survey of airline pilots who repeatedly complained about fatigue, 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 airlines' bottom lines, NASA released a heavily redacted version of the survey on its Web site yesterday afternoon. But the space and aeronautics agency published the information in a way that made it difficult to analyze.


Pilots were polled about incidents such as engine failures, bird strikes, fires onboard planes and encounters with severe turbulence. (By Paul Sancya -- Associated Press)


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 ranging from engine failures and bird strikes to fires onboard planes and encounters with severe turbulence. The survey cost about $11 million and was conducted from 2001 to 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 included terse answers such as "fatigue" and "crew rest."
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Others were slightly more extensive.

FULL story at link.