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Tuesday, January 1, 2008

NASA's airline safety report of little use

I'm very disappointed to read this news. Shouldn't every agency in the USA be striving for perfection, rather than mired in a morass of bureaucracy and incompetency?

Redacted Air-Traffic Safety Survey Released
NASA Downplays Pilots' Complaints About Fatigue, Security


NASA yesterday 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 airlines' bottom lines, NASA released a heavily redacted version of the survey on its Web site yesterday afternoon. But the space and aeronautics agency published the information in a way that made it difficult to analyze.

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

---Read the rest of the article by clicking on the link.

The obtuseness of NASA Administrator Michael Griffin seems beyond belief. ""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."

Sorry, Mr. Griffin, but you seem to be an idiot. This study cost "about $11 million and was conducted from 2001 to 2004" - and the data isn't going to be studied or even considered?

How stupid is that?

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