24 pilots responded to a survey that ended in 2005, but the work on its analysis has not been completed. NASA also fears that public safety in the airlines will be undermined if the results of the survey are published * Another claim: diversion of budgets for the moon project prevented the budgets intended for the analysis of the survey
NASA, which is known as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, does not reveal the results of a national survey in the framework of which thousands of pilots were questioned, during which it was discovered that safety problems such as near collisions and mutual interference on landing and take-off routes are much more common than the American government has believed until now.
NASA collected the information as part of a project costing 8.5 million dollars, during which approximately 24 thousand commercial pilots and private pilot license holders were interviewed by phone for almost four years. Since the end of the interviews at the beginning of 2005, the solicitation has stopped completely. The agency is eager to publish the results of the survey to the public.
Just last week, NASA ordered the subcontractor that actually carried out the survey, the Battle Memorial Institute, and its subcontractors, last Thursday, to return any information they have that belongs to the project and clean it from their computers by October 30.
A senior NASA official, NASA Assistant Administrator Thomas Luedtke, said that the disclosure of the findings could undermine public safety in the airlines and affect the profits of the airlines. Lautka commented that the results of the survey provide a comprehensive picture of several aspects of the American aviation industry. In addition, NASA considered the need to maintain the privacy of the pilots as a reason to shelve the survey, even though the airlines were not identified in the survey, neither were the pilots - all of whom were guaranteed anonymity.
Among the findings - pilots who reported double the rate of bird collisions with airplanes than what is commonly thought, as well as almost more collisions in the air or on runways than the government monitoring devices showed, according to a person familiar with the results. The survey also reveals higher-than-expected numbers of pilots experiencing near-catastrophic changes, and last-minute instructions to change landing plans.
Senior officials at NASA's Ames Research Center in California said they wanted to publish the report by the end of the year. "If the airlines are not safe, I want to know about it," says Congressman Brad Miller, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations of the Congressional Science and Technology Committee. "I'd rather not feel a false sense of security just because someone isn't telling us." Miller demanded that NASA provide his committee with information about the survey and the decision to suspend its publication. "Information appears to have great value in aviation safety, but it is shelved at NASA," wrote Congressman Michael Griffin to NASA Administrator. Apparently, the survey was put on the shelf as a result of the budget cuts in most projects at NASA and the diversion of budgets to the return to the moon project.
A spokeswoman for the American Aviation Authority, FAA, Laura Brown said that the agency found out what NASA's methodology is. "The FAA is confident that it is able to identify safety issues before they lead to accidents," she said.
Aviation experts said that NASA's pilot survey could be a valuable source for the industry and they believe that many of the safety problems simply go unreported.Although deaths from plane crashes are rare, the number of fatal collisions has dropped in recent years. "
Senior officials involved in preparing the survey said that the response rate to the survey among the pilots was 80 percent and they believe that it is more reliable than the other reporting systems they rely on when pilots report incidents voluntarily. "The data is strong," says Robert Dodd, an aviation safety expert hired by NASA to conduct the survey. "The process we did was carefully planned and was thorough and scientific."
