Does The Airline Industry Possess Undue Influence Over Our Government?

Does The Airline Industry Possess Undue Influence Over Our Government?


NASA FACES CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY OVER PILOT SAFETY SURVEY
(http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...ll.html#196450)
NASA got into hot water over the weekend when The Associated Press
reported
(http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...4Iv7Bi9q_L98bQ)
that the agency refused a Freedom of Information Act request to
release the results of a pilot survey on aviation safety, citing
concerns that the report could reflect badly on the aviation
industry. U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., a member of the House
Committee on Science and Technology, wrote to NASA Administrator
Michael Griffin that possible damage to the image of the airline
industry "does not appear to fall within any of the exceptions" in
the FOIA, The New York Times

(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/wa.../w&oref=slogin)
reported. Griffin said

(http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007...statement.html)
on Monday he had just been made aware of the FOIA request and
would immediately review the matter. "NASA should focus on how we
can provide information to the public -- not on how we can
withhold it," he said. Meanwhile, the House Committee on Science
and Technology said it also wants to take a look at those records,
according to Reuters
(http://www.reuters.com/article/polit...1759020071023),
and plans to hold a hearing on the matter soon.
http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...ll.html#196450

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j...4Iv7Bi9q_L98bQ
He dismissed any idea that the space agency would put commercial
interests ahead of public safety.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said he disagrees with a senior
official's written reason for refusing to turn over the results of
the $8.5 million pilot survey to The Associated Press. That
official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, told the AP
that the information, if publicized, could undermine public
confidence in the airlines and could affect the airlines' profits.

"This rationale was based on case law, but I do not agree with the
way it was written," Griffin said in a statement Wednesday. "I
regret the impression that NASA was in any way trying to put
commercial interests ahead of public safety. That was not and will
never be the case."

Griffin's spokesman, David Mould, said the space agency is still
evaluating whether the survey results will be made public. A top
NASA official flew this week to NASA Ames Research Center in
California, where the survey project was conducted, to review the
matter. Mould said the decision rests on whether the law requires
that it be kept secret, or whether the legal rationale simply was
provided as a way to keep it under wraps at the request of agency
officials.

The AP had sought to obtain the survey data, which includes 24,000
interviews with commercial and private pilots, over 14 months
under the Freedom of Information Act.

Luedtke's final rejection to the AP said: "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."

Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many
bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as
other government monitoring systems show, according to a person
familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them
publicly.

The revelations this week prompted the House Science and
Technology Committee to launch an investigation into NASA's
decisions, with a public hearing scheduled for next Wednesday.

Griffin's statement came as several other members of Congress
turned up the heat, demanding that NASA release information about
the survey, which ran for nearly four years before being shut
down.

"We need the information for the safety of the flying public,"
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., chairman of the Commerce, Science and
Transportation subcommittee on space and aeronautics, said
Wednesday.

Nelson and committee member Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., wrote
to NASA demanding that all records on the project be preserved
until the committee issues a formal subpoena for a possible
investigation or directs otherwise.

Lawmakers from the House Science and Technology committee also
wrote to the contractor that conducted NASA's survey, Battelle
Memorial Institute, directing it retain all original documents and
copies, after learning that NASA had ordered those documents
returned and copies deleted from Battelle's computers.

Battelle spokeswoman Katy Delaney said Wednesday that the
directive was in keeping with the company's contract, which is
ending this month and had required it to return all related
materials to NASA as part of the close-out procedure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/wa...n/23plane.html
A NASA spokesman, David Mould, said Monday that the purpose of the
study was “to develop methodologies” for analyzing data, not to
find what the data would show. But Mr. Mould said the data from
the questionnaires would be turned over to an airline pilots’
union and to a partnership between the airlines and the F.A.A.,
possibly by year’s end. ...

The F.A.A. has long struggled with what to say publicly about the
safety of individual airports or airlines. The agency was
established in part to promote aviation, but in 1996, Congress
decided that this job was in conflict with its role as a
regulator, and removed promotion from its mission.

NASA’s mission includes helping to sustain the United States’
pre-eminence in aviation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------



http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/200...dex.html?ex=13
NASA came in for severe criticism on Capitol Hill, with one House
leader comparing the agency to “a drug manufacturer finding out
through trials that there are problems with a drug and not making
the public aware because they don’t want to reduce the sales of
the drug or scare the public,” according to The Washington Post.
Air safety experts quoted in the article were equally aghast.
---------------------------------------------------------------------



http://blogs.abcnews.com/rapidreport...helved-ai.html
It all stemmed from a 1997 Gore Commission Report on Aviation,
when the Clinton administration was determined to reduce the air
accident rate by 80 percent.

In order to find out the causes of problems and accidents, NASA
developed a survey and interviewed about 24,000 airline pilots,
asking pilots a series of some 90 questions about their
experiences with close calls in the air.

NASA intended to include air traffic controllers and flight
attendants in the study of valuable safety information, however in
2005 the interviews stopped, the data was never released, and the
question now becomes -- why?

Those who have been involved in the project are loath to talk
on-camera or on-the-record, but are telling ABC News that they
were very disappointed when the project was ended. They thought it
could have been a real boon for safety and they are hoping that
this data gets used.

Just last week, NASA sent out an email to those involved in the
project, asking them to destroy any data that they had on hand.
Some people believe that it's because NASA wants to make sure they
are sitting on all of the data themselves and no one else has it
out there.