NASA on Monday will release results from nearly four years of safety surveys of airline and general aviation pilots, fulfilling a promise NASA Administrator Michael Griffin had made to the US Congress during hearings on the topic in early November.

Controversy had erupted earlier this year after NASA officials denied a freedom of information act (FOIA) request for information from the associated press (AP), responding that the data, if released, 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."

According to AP sources, the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service (Naoms) survey data revealed twice as many bird strikes, runway incursions and in-flight near misses as shown by the FAA’s data. Though Griffin questioned the validity of the data, he assured lawmakers that data from the $11.3 million project would be released by year’s end if it was legal to do so under the FOIA.

Anticipating Monday’s release, the US FAA today briefed reporters on some potential caveats regarding the data. Margaret Gilligan, FAA deputy associate administrator for aviation safety, questioned the accuracy and timeliness of the surveys, which involved phone calls to pilots asking them to recall over the past 2- to 3-months if they’d encountered certain safety issues, for example runway incursions.

Gilligan said the surveys originally were part of an industry-wide effort in the late 1990s to try to capture “hangar talk”, discussions among pilots and other aviation professionals regarding experiences or anomalies that could be used as precursors about risks.

While NASA independently pursued the pilot surveys, the FAA established the aviation safety action program (ASAP), which captures safety input from pilots and other aviation professionals within 24h of an incident or occurrence in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

There are now more than 150 ASAPs for pilots, mechanics, flight attendants and dispatchers, part of a broader FAA information gathering process that includes flight operations quality assurance (FOQA) and at least 20 other safety databases, which together make up the FAA’s aviation safety information analysis and sharing (ASIAS) system.

Gilligan calls ASAP “more robust” than NAOMS in part because of the timeliness of the incident data and a review process which involves the FAA, the airline and the submitter’s union representation. 

Issues aside, Gilligan said the FAA would integrate the NASA data into ASIAS to “get the best picture of the system” but would not reanalyze the information for correctness.

Lawmakers however, as part of an omnibus appropriations bill signed by President George Bush on Wednesday, directed NASA to verify the data and to consider restarting the program.

Source: FlightGlobal.com

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