After three years of stalling, NASA released data compiled from nearly 30,000 pilot surveys over 6 years at a cost of about $6 million.
The information from the National Aviation Operational Monitoring Service (NAOMS) was made public on the NASA Web site Monday in the form of extensive read-only files with the names of pilots and airlines removed for legal reasons. However it remains unclear what the information reveals or why it was collected.
“We consider the study was not properly organized and not properly reviewed,” said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin during a teleconference Monday. “A little over $1 million a year was put into this study. I appreciate that it was a lot of money to a taxpayer?s perspective, and certainly to me. But to us it was not a lot of money in regard to our work and it was not very well used.”
No analyses of the data has been made by NASA, Griffin said.
The project ended in 2004 in favor of an automated online forum operated by the FAA, according to the NASA Web site.
“We do have a very wide variety of reporting mechanisms in the industry that we use, where pilots or mechanics or ground crews can submit information to us,” said FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette. The FAA also uses automated downloads and analyses of flight data recorder information to determine if mishaps or irregularities happened that were not reported.
But the FAA has not reviewed the NAOMS data and Duquette could not comment about specifically what they might find there.
Griffin did assure that current data collection by the FAA had “moved beyond” the means of the NAOMS project. “What the public should understand is they have approximately the same risk of dying from a lighting strike as they have dying in airline travel.”
