NASA won't disclose air safety survey

NASA won't disclose air safety survey

news.yahoo.com

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized....Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Another example of how we are not to be trusted to make up our own minds!! Does anyone else have a problem with this or is it just me? An 8.5 million dollar study (small by standards of government spending) that was paid for by you and I, but still we are not allowed to view the data for purely financial reasons.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Give it a little time the information will be eventually released. People for the most part do not want to hear the truth of the matter otherwise they would not feel so comfortable to fly. Remember the old saying, 'its much safer to fly than to drive on the freeway?' Well it is still true.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers

Charming guys at NASA, isnt it.... but the public continues to trust them. I have no idea why. Just the obvious cover ups of UFO's and moon bases should be enough to convince people they are not credible.

The corruption, lies and propaganda continues...


[edit on 22-10-2007 by Copernicus]

my favorite part..

A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits.

thats what its all about "dont tell them how unsafe we are, we need their money"

Bad idea.... tossing out good data..

A probability map for flight scheduling might be made.

Not all things are random and flights over bird migration routes
and times might be avoidable.

Sure, NASA won't disclose flight data to the public to avoid causing any type of panic. But you know they will be the first ones to tell us if they ever find any signs of life in space. At least we know they have the peoples best interests in mind.

They don't want this data exposed because then we will realize the they are really flying aircraft that are spraying toxic chemtrails, and the extra traffic is causing problems, because they are flying in the paths of normal air traffic.

There, I said it.

Bring it on government debunkers

I see sarcasm here and some conspiracy theories.

Yet as usual picking though the good data is verboten.

Why announce this report and say nah uh, its not for you.
No soup for you... NAZI NASA...

Just take the data and DO something useful out of it.
You don't have to say any thing, when the project is complete
announce some great strategy or rules or scheduling... didn't
they learn any thing from Einstein on the laws of probability.

NO.

We paid for it, but we get zecretz like UFOs and 9/11/01.

And the NASA videos with lights in them.... either a video feed injection
like 9/11/01 or its Tesla craft they stole in zecret.

Video processing for space missions later put to good but poor
critical acclaim on 9/11/01.


[edit on 10/23/2007 by TeslaandLyne]

Maybe it's not the frequency of near-collisions they don't want to talk about. Maybe it's what aircraft have almost collided with.

There are a lot of incidents that occur in commercial airlines that the public never hears about, its been that way for a very long time, and is nothing new. The most frequent problems are hydraulic failures, and blown tires. This happens pretty regularly, and you would never hear about it on the news unless the news agency picked up the call on a scanner, and had a truck near the airport to film the landing. I probably worked a hydraulic failure once every two to three months, just on my airlines, at my station, and on my shift. Bits fall off aircraft all the time as well, but unless they hit something, or land in the middle of a very public area, again you will not hear about it. Most of the parts that fall off are nonessential pieces of composite which simply make the aircraft more streamlined, and most of that stuff lands in the middle of BFE nowhere. We used to keep an incident sheet in flight ops that had all aircraft incidents across all airlines, and it was pages and pages long for every week.

As to near misses, that is another thing that will look worse on paper then it really is. Most of them happen when they switch between the letting a block of aircraft take-off and a block land. At my airport the blocks were in roughly 3’s most of the time. So for instance the last plane on the take-off group is sitting at the end of the runway, and the pilot is taking longer then he should to get moving, meanwhile the first landing aircraft is coming in behind him. The pilot in the landing aircraft can see the aircraft on the runway, and is certainly not going to hit him, but he will wait until the last possible minute to go-around in hopes the first plane will clear off in time for him to make his landing.
Is there any danger in this scenario that a collision will occur? No.
Will it be shown on paper as a near-miss? Yes.
Is that really a fair estimation of what happened? Not really.
Will it unduly affect customer confidence in aviation? Yes.

The point is that there are a lot of minor emergencies, but they are minor, and they are dealt with. On paper, especially to the layman, they will look worse then they really are. Flying is safer then driving now matter how you stack it, and to release this type of data to folks who don’t understand how minor most of the events are, is just going to cause undo skepticism of the airline industry, which actually has a very good safety average.


Btw, that survey was taken by talking to pilots, one thing you should all know about pilots is that after flying, their second favorite hobby is bitching about stuff. Even John Lear will attest to that, as he has mentioned it in other threads.

I worked with someone that rented airplanes,

he was always getting phone calls on accidents.

I just happened to ask him about it and he said

a lot of damage is on the ground, moving the plane around.

reply to post by defcon5

As to near misses, that is another thing that will look worse on paper then it really is.

Hi def,
I agree with everything you said. I fly out of one of busiest, most congested air traffic areas in the country. I see what must be considered near miss situations several times a season but as far as I know not only are the planes and pilots aware of each other but ATC has them on the scope and is informing the pilots. So I guess I'd say most of it is a yawner. Oh, and you'll likely not hear me calling in and complaining. Happy pilot!