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NASA air safety survey squashed?

This AP story (via CNN) alleges that NASA is being told to not release results of an aviation safety survey that might make people nervous and airlines less profitable (if that’s possible). If that’s true someone’s got a lot to answer for. Particularly troubling is:

The survey’s purpose was to develop a new way of tracking safety trends and problems the airline industry could address. The project was shelved when NASA cut its budget as emphasis shifted to send astronauts to the moon and Mars.

That makes the whole hubub about the impractical Mars mission particularly alarming. While I’d love to see us get to another planet before I die, using it as a smoke screen to cut aviation safety programs isn’t good government.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Aviation, Rants, Stuff I saw. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “NASA air safety survey squashed?”

  1. meg Says:
    October 25th, 2007 at 7:37 am

    I don’t get why NASA was doing this survey in the first place. It’s the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, not the National Aviation and Space Administration. If the NTSB couldn’t be trusted to do it, then it should properly fall under the purview of the GSA or the OIG.

  2. faber Says:
    October 26th, 2007 at 12:34 pm

    NASA’s got its fingers in a fair number of pies, but its history with aviation safety goes back a long way. They talk about some of their (often cooperative) aviation work at:

    http://sbir.gsfc.nasa.gov/SBIR/successes/aviat.htm

    In addition to the survey that the AP is worked up about, they’ve been doing the ASRS program for a while. That program is pretty well regarded among the pilots I know.

    http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/

    That said, the survey could easily have been done by the NTSB.