Controversial aviation study released by NASA

William Atkins
Wednesday, 02 January 2008 19:18

Science - Space

The National Aviation Operational Monitoring Service (NAOMS) research document on air traffic safety was released by NASA on Monday, December 31, 2007.          

Media sources are already claiming that the sixteen-thousand page document is difficult to understand and it does not make any conclusions or does not contain any suggestions on the current state of air traffic safety, such as runway congestion.

On the other hand, NASA states that it followed standard procedures for the release of such documents. Its rules prevent any alteration of the information. According to a January 1, 2008 Houston Chronicle article (“NASA releases a cryptic study of air traffic safety”): “NASA offered no documentation on how to use the findings, nor did it explain how to unlock cryptic coding found throughout the data.”

Within the Chronicle article NASA administrator Mike Griffin states, "We've gone the extra mile with this data. Well beyond our original intensions."

The document is based on telephone interviews with 30.5 thousand pilots as part of an $11.3 million study taken between April 2001 and December 2004.

Within the document, NASA found numerous complaints from pilots (airline and general aviation) including concerns about airport security, air-traffic controllers, and their own fatigue and well-being.

NASA has been criticized in the past for not releasing the document, claiming that the agency feared the airline industry would suffer from the adverse information inside the document.

When the report was released, according to a Washington Post article (“Redacted Air-Traffic Safety Survey Released”), Griffin stated, "It's hard for me to see any data the traveling public would care about or ought to care about. We were asked to release the data, and we did."

Information from NASA on NAOMS (National Aviation Operational Monitoring Service) can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/news/reports/NAOMS.html.

The NASA NAOMS website states, “This Web site contains responses collected from the air carrier and general aviation pilot surveys as part of the NASA National Aviation Operational Monitoring Service (NAOMS) project from April 2001 through December 2004. Relevant information is contained in the accompanying documentation. In the interest of timeliness, this first release is by nature conservative to ensure the responses do not contain confidential commercial information or information that could compromise the anonymity of individual pilots. Efforts will be made in 2008 to release additional NAOMS information that was redacted for this release.”

Based on the following statement by Griffin, it is quite possible that the controversial survey, and resulting document, was not conducted in a valid way. Griffin states (bolds added for emphasis), “The fundamental concern I had at the time of my testimony and still have is that this research work was not properly peer reviewed at its inception, and the data extracted from the survey was not properly validated at its conclusion.” [CNN article "Report containing thousands of pilot complaints is released"]