Thanks to the Associated Press and the New York Times for pointing out a critical source of information about the dangers of American aviation — and it’s not the FAA.

It turns out that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a database of information from commercial and general aviation pilots about dangerous incidents in the air.  The agency, as the Times writes in an editorial, has been interviewing pilots for "several years…about how often they saw risky incidents, like near collisions, or stressful last-second changes in landing instructions."  A total of 24,000 interviews have been conducted.

But NASA rejected an Associated Press FOIA request to review the results of these surveys.  The rebuttal from NASA, so blatant a coverup as to seem almost improbable, was that telling the world about these data could hurt the commercial prospects of the airlines where these pilots work and raise doubts about general aviation.

Even more bizarre is the fact that NASA itself has not hurried to get these results to the taxpaying, flying public.  Serious airline accidents happen rarely, but they usually have a 100% death rate.  The Associated Press has done the public a service in trying to get this information.  NASA, which has a special responsibility to ensure the safety of Americans in the air and in space, is doing the public a grave disservice, first by hiding these data (24,000 interviews would seem to be a fair representative sample) and by hiding this part of the agency’s mission.  Who knew that there was another federal agency we could turn to for information about aviation safety?  What has prevented NASА from embracing and fulfilling this part of its governmental mission?  Perhaps there is an unwritten agreement that this is the FAA’s territory.  Or perhaps NASА officials want to avoid the spotlight when accidents do occur.

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