NASA Quashes Air Safety Report to Protect Airline Profits

NASA used $8.5 million voted by Congress to do a safety survey of the US air traffic system. After interviewing 24,000 airline pilots, the agency found that near misses and runway interference are much more common than anyone had previously thought. NASA, having uncovered facts that affect the safety of every air traveler, then did the unthinkable. It shredded the report to protect the profitability of America’s airlines.

The Associated Press broke this story a couple of days ago, and it is absolutely shocking that any government agency would hush up a report to ensure companies that have safety issues don’t get any bad press. Imagine the uproar if reports about the lead coated Chinese-made toys that have been in the news the last month or so were ignored because money was at stake. What is more shocking is that NASA didn’t even pretend it was doing anything else.

In his final denial letter to the AP under the Freedom of Information Act, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke wrote, “Release of the requested data, which are 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.” He could have questioned the validity of the study, or come up with some other excuse, but there in black and white was his reason.

Better still, NASA directed contractor Battelle Memorial Institute, which does a lot of research for the Feds, as well as all subcontractors, to return all project information by next Tuesday. Moreover, NASA ordered BMI and the subcontractors to purge the data from their computers.

There is some good news in all of this. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in a statement, “NASA should focus on how we can provide information to the public, not on how we can withhold it.” Nothing like a little bad press to embarrass the government into doing the right thing. Meanwhile, the airlines themselves should be out screaming for this information, along the lines of “if we don’t know about it, we can’t fix it.” Sadly, the airlines seem to be saying nothing at all.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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