Public Records Free Directory Blog

A national survey of airline pilots finds that safety problems such as near collisions and runway interference occurs much more often than previously thought. This survey was conducted by NASA under an $8.5 million federal safety project through telephone interviews with approximately 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots; the survey lasted for almost four years.  The survey was stopped more than a year ago, but NASA has refused to release the survey data to the public citing concerns that the data would upset air travelers and hurt airline profits.   Recently NASA ordered the contractor that  conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.  On October 22, 2007, Congress announced that it was beginning a formal investigation of the pilot survey and ordered NASA to desist from destroying records.    NASA’s administrator, Michael Griffin, said in a statement that the agency research should be available  and will reconsider how much of the information may be made public.  Mr. Griffin further said that it will reconsider the Associated Press’ Freedom of Information Act request for the survey, made over 14 months ago, that was denied.

 UPDATE:  NASA has now promised Congress that it will reveal the results of the study.  NASA’ s administrator has directed release “as soon as possible” of all the research data that does not contain confidential commercial information.