Will The Facts Be Worse Than The Fears?

ANN REALTIME REPORTING 10.31.07 1545 EDT: The truth will come out after all. In his prepared remarks before a Congressional hearing, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced the agency will release the results of a controversial airline safety study after all.

As ANN reported, NASA spent nearly four years to conduct telephone surveys of some 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots, asking them about near misses in the air and on runways and cases in which air traffic controllers changed landing instructions at the last second.

News of NASA's withholding of the survey came to light last week. The Associated Press tried unsuccessfully to obtain the survey results under the Freedom of Information Act over a 14-month period.

Griffin made several attempts to clarify NASA's position on suppressing the survey, most recently stating the agency "should focus on how we can provide information to the public, not on how we can withhold it."

In the days since the story broke, public outcry has led to renewed concerns over the safety of air travel... which, not without irony, was the reason NASA used to justify keeping the survey results confidential in the first place.

So... will the truth be scarier than those fears? Time will tell... as the results will reportedly be released soon. Stay tuned.

(And does anyone else find it interesting this is happening on Halloween? -- Ed.)

FMI: www.nasa.gov