On October 31, the House Committee on Science and Technology will hold hearings to find out exactly why NASA has so far refused to release any potentially life-saving information from the survey of air traffic safety incidents it conducted under the $8.5 million National Aviation System Operational Monitoring Service (NAOMS).
NASA's claim that the data has been withheld because it is "sensitive and safety-related, [and] 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," has not cut the public-information mustard with Committee on Science and Technology chairman Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tennessee, 6th).
"Given the inference from that response that at NASA commercial interests appear to trump the public’s right to aviation safety data, we are worried that the integrity of the data from NAOMS may be at risk," said Rep. Gordon in a letter to NASA administrator Dr. Michael Griffin.
On Oct. 22, 2007, the Associated Press reported that NASA had ordered its NAOMS survey consultants at the Ames Research Center to archive all data related to the project and purge it from their computers.
Ironically, NASA's fact sheet on the NAOMS survey system claims that "Advanced statistical methods are utilized to process the data and extract the information automatically." In practice, it looks like Congress will have to extract the information... painfully.
Also See:
When Flying Really SUX
About the Congressional Committee System
About the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
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