NASA Releases Information on Unprecedented Survey of Pilots

By: Barbara Herring | WSAV-TV
Published: January 01, 2008

» Comments | Post a Comment

NASA has begrudgingly released some results from a federal air safety study it previously withheld over concerns it would upset travelers and hurt airline profits.

NASA published the findings in a format that made it cumbersome for any thorough analysis by outsiders. The research conducted over nearly four years relates to safety problems identified by some 29,000 pilots interviewed by telephone.

Earlier characterizations from people who have seen the results say they will show that events like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than previously recognized.

Such information could not be gleaned from the more than 16,000 pages posted by NASA on its Web site because of information that was edited out.

NASA did not provide documentation on how to use its data, nor did it provide keys to unlock the cryptic codes used in the dataset.