Pilots’ Fears on Air Safety Buried in Survey Data ; NASA Release Lacks Details About Fatigue, Controllers

By DEL QUENTIN WILBER, WASHINGTON POST NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON NASA on Monday released partial results of a massive air safety survey of airline pilots who repeatedly complained about fatigue, problems with air traffic controllers, airport security, and the layouts of runways and taxiways.

Reacting to criticism about its initial decision to withhold the database for fear of harming the airlines’ bottom lines, NASA released a heavily redacted version of the survey on its Web site Monday afternoon. But the space and aeronautics agency published the information in a way that made it extremely difficult to analyze.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in a conference call that the agency had no plans to study the database for trends. He said NASA only conducted the survey to determine whether gathering information from pilots in such a way was worthwhile.

The survey cost about $11 million and was conducted from 2001 through 2004.

Despite the lack of analysis by NASA scientists, Griffin said there was nothing in the database that should concern air travelers. “It’s hard for me to see any data the traveling public would care about or ought to care about,” he said. “We were asked to release the data and we did.”

He dismissed suggestions that NASA chose to release the data late on New Year’s Eve, when the public is distracted by holidays and news organizations are thinly staffed.

“We didn’t deliberately choose to release on the slowest news day of the year,” Griffin said.

The NASA database, which included more than 10,000 pages of information, was based on extensive telephone polling of airline and general aviation pilots about incidents ranging from engine failures and bird strikes to fires onboard planes and encounters with severe turbulence.

The survey included narrative responses by pilots, but NASA released the information in such a way as to make it impossible to determine details of what the pilots were describing. The narratives sometimes included terse answers such as “fatigue” and “crew rest.”

Others were slightly more extensive.

“Pilots asleep on flight deck is a problem,” one pilot said. Another suggested that survey workers ask pilots how often they fall asleep in the cockpit.

The reports included discussions of pilots’ difficulties in talking to controllers in busy airspace. Air traffic control “capacity inadequate to handle traffic load,” one pilot reported.

“There are too many people on the frequency and they are causing a safety problem,” another pilot responded.

Airport safety has been of particular concern to New Jersey air travelers. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office said Newark Liberty International Airport had 25 close calls on runways from Oct. 1, 2000, through Sept. 20, 2006, the ninth highest in the country.

That report, released Dec. 6, said a “lack of coordination and leadership” by the Federal Aviation Administration is causing a decline in runway safety nationwide.

NASA refused to release the pilot survey data several months ago in response to a request by The Associated Press, saying publication of the results might affect the public’s confidence in the airlines. NASA was roundly criticized by members of Congress and aviation safety experts for its refusal.

Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., chairman of the House Science and Technology committee, said Monday that the agency should not have redacted so much of the data and then released it in a format that made it difficult to analyze. He promised more hearings into the matter.

“It was just an effort to get something out the door rather than a serious effort to provide transparency,” Gordon said.

“It was heavily redacted, and there is not much usefulness to the data until we get more information.”

Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, also criticized the way NASA released its database. “When a government agency is not transparent with the American people, particularly on an issue like safety, they are not fulfilling their responsibilities and earning their pay,” Hall said.

FAA officials said they had no plans to launch an independent study of the survey. But the FAA is looking at ways to “integrate the data with the existing data we have,” said Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman.

Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who helped design the project for NASA, said the release of information was inadequate.

“The data they released are intentionally designed to prevent people from analyzing the rates properly and are designed to entrap analysts into computing rates that are much higher than the survey really shows,” he said Monday.

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This article contains material from The Associated Press.

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