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Government Withholds Airline Safety Survey Data

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By RITA BEAMISH, The Associated Press

Published: October 23, 2007

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - An unprecedented national survey of pilots by the U.S. government has found safety problems such as near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than previously recognized.

The government is withholding the information, however, fearful it would upset air travelers and hurt airline profits.

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million federal safety project through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots during nearly four years. Since shutting down the project more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge its survey data publicly.

Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near midair 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 survey also revealed higher-than-expected numbers of pilots who experienced 'in-close approach changes' - potentially dangerous, last-minute instructions to alter landing plans.

Officials at the NASA Ames Research Center in California have said they want to publish their own report on the project by year's end.

Although to most people NASA is associated with spaceflight, the agency has a long history of aviation safety research. Its experts study atmospheric science, and airplane materials and design, among other areas.

After The Associated Press disclosed details Monday about the survey and efforts to keep its results secret, NASA's chief said he will reconsider how much of the survey findings can be made public.

'NASA should focus on how we can provide information to the public, not on how we can withhold it,' NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in a statement. He said the agency's research and data 'should be widely available and subject to review and scrutiny.'

Last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers. Congress intervened Monday, saying it will launch a formal investigation and instruct NASA to keep all its data. Griffin said he already was ordering that all survey data be preserved.

A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said earlier that revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits. Luedtke acknowledged the survey results 'present a comprehensive picture of certain aspects of the U.S. commercial aviation industry.'

The AP sought to obtain the survey data over 14 months under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

'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,' Luedtke wrote in a final denial letter to the AP.

NASA also cited pilot confidentiality as a reason, although no airlines were identified in the survey, nor were the identities of pilots, all of whom were promised anonymity.

Griffin said NASA will reconsider its denial for the data to the Associated Press.

'If the airlines aren't safe, I want to know about it,' said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., chairman of the House Science and Technology investigations and oversight subcommittee. 'I would rather not feel a false sense of security because they don't tell us.'

Discussing NASA's decision not to release the survey data, Miller said: 'There is a faint odor about it all.'

Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, plans to announce a formal investigation and will instruct NASA and its contractors not to destroy any data, aides said. Gordon said he was disturbed by the report NASA told its contractor to delete the survey data.

'I cannot imagine any good public purpose being served by destroying records,' Gordon said in a statement. 'The committee will get to the bottom of all of this.'

The survey's purpose was to develop a new way of tracking safety trends and problems the airline industry could address. The project was shelved when NASA cut its budget as emphasis shifted to sending astronauts to the moon and Mars.

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