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NASA withheld startling survey

It found that airplane safety incidents happen more often than thought.

By RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press
Published October 23, 2007

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - A national survey of pilots has found that safety problems such as near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than previously recognized. But the government is withholding the information, 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 over nearly four years. Since shutting down the project more than a year ago, the space agency has declined to divulge its survey data publicly.

After details were reported Monday about the survey and efforts to keep its results secret, NASA's chief said he will reconsider how much of the 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 announced a formal investigation Monday of the pilot survey and instructed NASA to halt any destruction of records. Griffin said he already was ordering that all survey data be preserved.

The Associated Press learned about the NASA results from a person familiar with the survey, who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss them.

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

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

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 send astronauts to the moon and Mars.

NASA said nothing it discovered in the survey warranted notifying the Federal Aviation Administration immediately and data showed improvements in some areas. Survey managers occasionally briefed the FAA.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency is confident it can identify safety issues before they lead to accidents.

Aviation experts said NASA's pilot survey results could be a valuable resource in an industry where they believe many safety problems are underreported, even while deaths from commercial air crashes are rare and the number of deadly crashes has dropped in recent years.

Officials involved in the survey touted the unusually high response rate among pilots, 80 percent, and said they believe it is more reliable than reporting systems that rely on pilots to report incidents voluntarily.

"The data is strong," said Robert Dodd, an aviation safety expert hired by NASA to manage the survey.

Pilot interviews lasted about 30 minutes, with standardized questions about how frequently they encountered equipment problems, smoke or fire, engine failure, passenger disturbances, severe turbulence, collisions with birds and inadequate tower communication, according to documents obtained by the AP.

Pilots also were asked about last-minute changes in landing instructions, flying too close to other planes, near collisions with ground vehicles or buildings, overweight takeoffs and occasions when pilots left the cockpit.

Among the 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.

-The survey revealed higher-than-expected numbers of pilots who experienced "in-close approach changes" - potentially dangerous, last-minute instructions to alter landing plans.

[Last modified October 22, 2007, 22:52:13]