Says NASA Does Not Place Commercial Interests Ahead Of
Safety
In a measured response, on Wednesday NASA Administrator Michael
Griffin (shown below) expressed regret over the agency's stated
reason for refusing to publicly release a reportedly damning survey
of air safety problems, reported by the nation's airline
pilots.
As ANN reported, NASA tasked
a contractor to conduct the phone survey of roughly 24,000
commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years,
until the start of 2005. The survey found near-collisions and
runway incursions occur much more frequently than the government
once thought... as much as twice as often.
The agency then shut down the project... and refused to disclose
the results publicly. Last week, NASA took the additional step to
order the contractor to purge the survey results.
The Associated Press reports Griffin disagrees with a senior
official's written reason for withholding results of the $8.5
million survey. Associate administrator Thomas Luedtke said the
agency didn't want the public's confidence in airlines shaken in
releasing the report... as that could affect airline profits.
"This rationale was based on case law, but I do not agree with
the way it was written," Griffin responded. "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 statement follows his earlier comments, expressing apparent
wonderment at repeated denials of Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) requests by The Associated Press to obtain
the survey's results.
"I have just been made aware of the
issue involving information from a NASA survey of airline pilots
regarding safety issues being withheld under the Freedom of
Information Act," Griffin asserted Monday.
Revelations of the survey's apparent squelching prompted the
House Science and Technology Committee to launch an investigation
into NASA's decision to withhold the survey. A public hearing is
scheduled for October 31.
Several members of Congress also demand NASA release information
of the survey. "We need the information for the safety of the
flying public," Florida Senator Bill Nelson, chairman of the
Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee on space and
aeronautics, said Wednesday.
Other lawmakers from the House Science and Technology committee
notified Battelle Memorial Institute, the private contractor that
conducted the survey, directing it retain all original documents
and copies. NASA previously ordered those documents returned, and
copies purged from Battelle's computers.
A spokeswoman for Battelle said NASA's instructions was
consistent with its contract... implying it's too late for
lawmakers to get those documents from the company.