Air Safety Survey: Rampant Skepticism About NASA's Sincerity

NASA Says Study All But Worthless, AvWeb

“It’s hard for me… to see any data here that the traveling public would care about or ought to care about.” [Griffin] told puzzled reporters who thought they might be covering a press conference about aviation safety. Instead they witnessed the political lid being firmly closed on an issue that has dogged NASA for two months and which Griffin clearly wanted no more part of.”

NASA Offers Airline Safety Data, NY Times

“Mr. Gordon and Representative Brad Miller, Democrat of North Carolina, who is chairman of the investigation and oversight subcommittee, pledged to push NASA further. Mr. Miller said that “if 80 percent of the pilots they ask agree to sit still for a half-hour survey, voluntarily, my conclusion is the pilots had something they wanted others to know about.” “This is now 3 years old, and it’s been dumped, unanalyzed and scrubbed of much of the useful information,” Mr. Miller said.”

Redacted Air-Traffic Safety Survey Released, Washington Post

“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.”

Report containing thousands of pilot complaints is released, CNN

“Robert Dodd, the principal investigator on the study for seven years, said he was “disappointed and perplexed” when he learned NASA initially would not make the findings public.”

NASA releases a cryptic study of air traffic safety, Houston Chronicle

“We are willing to release the data, but we — NASA — are not willing to draw conclusions from it,” Griffin said. “NASA does not have any plans to analyze it. That is for the broader community.”

Public served poorly by NASA’s grudging release of safety data, The Morning Journal

“Without adequate information from NASA about how to look at and interpret the mountain of data, outsiders such as news organizations have a formidable task in trying to understand the problems identified by pilots and then trying to measure the performance of the FAA and aviation industry in dealing with the problems. If that doesn’t worry NASA or the aviation industry, it should worry the public. NASA should be forced to present the report’s findings in a manner that the public can find meaningful.”