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Airline safety survey kiboshed by NASA
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NASA appears to be sandbagging on reporting the results of a survey they conducted a few years back on airline safety. Their data, which is taken from phone interviews across 24,000 pilots, apparently suggest that the number of "incidents" in airline travel are significantly higher than reported by the FAA.Asked to reveal the data to the AP, NASA politely declined, stating that revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits.
Since when does safety take a back seat to airline profits? Does anyone else see the airline lobby at work here?
I'm well past the conspiracy theory and into the complacent stage in my life where this sort of stuff doesn't bother me anymore. Perhaps its because I'm still confident in the general safety record of the industry. As the MSNBC article concedes, there is only 1 fatality in about 4.5 million departures. I suppose I can take my chances for now.
Filed under: Airlines, Transportation, Airports
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Cathy Oct 27th 2007 2:04PM
I think the traveling public are getting what they are paying for. What kind of airplaine and service do you expect for $99? Deregulation and competition have forced the airlines to sell their product below cost. And the only thing deregulated in the airline industry is the fares. Everything else is regulated!
Marie Oct 27th 2007 2:20PM
Hey Mike, Where did u get ur wrong info from? The conservatives?? Who voted Carter as 1 of the worst presidants in the last 100 years? Could that be the conservatives?? Who told You Reagan did not deregulate the airlines?? I guess U R one of the 1% of the exceptionally Wealthy thats running this country. U must be listening to Rush Limbo/Bimbo, with the bucks. Its a shame us middle class have to pay all the taxes for the big corporations and the exceptionally wealthy, that get all the tax breaks. All the media, with exception of a few public radio stations (that the exceptionally wealthy would love to shut down) is where most of the people get only the info that they want to people to hear about and not the Whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. Its shamefull what is happening to this wonderful country of ours. People don't realize, we all come in the same way and go out the same way, all the money they may have (speaking of the greedy ones) won't change anything. Wonder if any of those have a consience when the end is near for them? Its sad to think of all the greedy heartless hipocrits out there that could care less if woman and children and yes men are hungry, homeless, and without medical care, that every living soul should be able to have. They don't want your million dollar homes/cars/trips/etc. they just want food/housing/and health care.
jeanne hooker Oct 27th 2007 4:58PM
i have been a partner to an employee( flight crew) from the world's second largest airline . you know the gershwin tune!we will never know all they know but it must be safe enough because after reaching retirement at age 55 flying is is still all there is for my partner! the air traffic control system has been over burdened for sometime.as one e-mail stated,"air travel has become a flying greyhound bus."i used to love air travel but it is not the class act it was,but nothing on the ground is either.i'll still take the odds in the air over the road any day.you don't see pilots multitasking like selfish drivers on the road.
John J. Tormey III, Esq. Jan 2nd 2008 5:18PM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 2, 2008
Contact:
Tom Sullivan, “Quiet Rockland”: 1-845-480-1088, “http://www.quietrockland.com”
John J. Tormey III, Esq.: 1-212-410-4142
ROCKLAND COUNTY, NEW YORK CITIZEN GROUP “QUIET ROCKLAND” CALLS ON U.S. CONGRESS AND THE GAO TO INVESTIGATE NASA’S ISSUANCE OF ITS $11 MILLION, 16,000-PAGE “AIR SAFETY SURVEY”
Rockland County, NY - January 2, 2008: Livid that NASA and the FAA now appear to have acted in concert towards a common goal of concealing vital air traffic safety information from flyers and others on the ground, and in solidarity with a call for further hearings by Chairman of House Science and Technology Committee, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), suburban New York activist group “Quiet Rockland” today called upon Congress and its investigative arm the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to examine and compel correction of NASA’s just-issued “Air Safety Survey”.
John J. Tormey III, attorney with “Quiet Rockland”, said: “NASA Administrator Michael Griffin admitted that his agency’s release of the Survey’s data occurred late on New Year’s Eve. He then assured all of us that NASA ‘didn’t deliberately choose to release on the slowest news day of the year’. Griffin and NASA doth protest too much. The NASA survey data was issued in a redacted and deliberately-indecipherable manner. NASA previously sought to withhold the totality of this same data at least once before, when NASA rejected a prior AP FOIA request for it. Of course NASA sought to bury its New Year’s information-release amongst the champagne corks and the dropping ball. Griffin’s suggestion otherwise insults the intelligence of the American public.
“In response, Quiet Rockland schedules this press release to arrive on what should be one of the busiest back-to-work news days of the new year. 2008 will be the year that we mandate transparency of government. We cannot trust NASA management to communicate fairly or candidly to the American people. It is pathetic that this once-majestic agency of the Apollo era, no longer able to put astronauts on the Moon, and facing difficulty keeping a number of its recently-launched spacecraft intact, now cannot even terrestrially adopt precision or seriousness of purpose beyond that of Captain Anthony Nelson, Major Roger Healy, and Barbara Eden’s ‘Jeannie’. How dare NASA play space games with our safety!
“The organizational ineptitude of NASA management is particularly threatening in light of yet another recent runway incident between two planes over the Holidays, once again at LAX, involving pilot miscommunications with an air traffic controller. NASA’s ostensible collaboration with its cousin-agency FAA towards concealing safety information from Americans, is confluent with the overall objective of the aero-mercantile complex to over-schedule flights and over-saturate our skies. With focus only upon the almighty buck, these un-checked rogue agencies continue to act at the expense of citizen and environmental safety and health. FAA’s “NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign” is another component of this same harmful aviation special-interest plan. That Redesign must be and will be defeated by citizen outcry such as that voiced by ‘Quiet Rockland’, not to mention the pending federal court litigations and Congressional action against it, taken in the interests of making our skies and our homes safer.
“NASA and Administrator Michael Griffin indicate that they have no intention to analyze or study, much less further report to the public or press upon the 16,000-plus pages of raw data in the ‘Air Safety Survey’. ‘Quiet Rockland’ therefore asks that Congress and the GAO: (1) audit and investigate NASA’s purposeful mishandling and cheeky and contemptuous New Year’s Eve issuance of purposefully-obfuscated and misleading data; and (2) order NASA to marshal and digest the Survey data and report to Congress, the GAO, and the media on it, in a fully-intelligible writing, within thirty calendar days after the date of this press release. Given NASA’s proclivity to hide from the truth, ‘Quiet Rockland’ suggests Groundhog Day as the most fitting date imaginable for that next report’s issuance.
“Of the current Survey, Griffin says ‘It’s hard for me… to see any data the traveling public would care about or ought to care about’. ‘Quiet Rockland’ assures Griffin and NASA that anecdotes extracted from the current Survey such as “pilot difficulties in talking to controllers in busy airspace’; air traffic control “capacity inadequate to handle traffic load”; “too many people on the frequency…causing a safety problem”; and perhaps worst of all, “pilots asleep” on the “flight deck”, are most definitely “cared about” by the traveling public - and will indubitably also be “cared about” by the many travelers who comprise Congress, the GAO, and the federal judiciary.”