NASA has said it will reconsider its decision to withhold from news source, Associated Press data compiled during a multi-year survey of airline and general aviation pilots.
Seeking to stem the ire of US lawmakers, NASA administrator Michael Griffin says: "I am reviewing this Freedom of Information Act request to determine what, if any, of this information may legally be made public. NASA should focus on how we can provide information to the public - not on how we can withhold it."
The survey, called the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service, was launched in the late 1990s as part of a White House plan to reduce air carrier fatalities by 80% in 10 years.
By 2005, when it was cancelled for budgetary reasons, the survey had collected more than 20,000 responses from pilots and the data was de-identified.
Additionally, thousands more pilots were tracked to see how their responses would change over time. Questions focused on incidents with bird strikes, in-flight and on-ground near misses, air traffic control-dictated runway changes late in an approach, and a variety of other safety-related events.
Associated Press reports sources as saying the data revealed twice as many bird strikes, runway incursions and in-flight near misses as shown by the US Federal Aviation Administration's own data.
A researcher familiar with similar safety studies told Flight International online service Air Transport Intelligence (ATI), flightglobal.com's sister publication and news service, that it is a well-established fact that more incidents occur in reality than are officially recorded in programmes such as the FAA's Aviation Safety Action Program or even the confidential, voluntary NASA-administered Aviation Safety Reporting System.
According to FAA officials, NASA had not provided them with the data from the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service, and question whether the information has sufficiently detail to extract reliable incident information even if it had been provided.
The controversy erupted when Associated Press reported that its Freedom of Information Act request had been turned down by NASA because the agency said in a letter: "The release of the requested data, which is 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."
Associated Press has reported that NASA had ordered the survey data be deleted. Congress has requested an investigation, telling NASA to retain the data.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
