What NASA Won't Tell You About Air Safety

rabble writes "According to a report out of Washington, NASA wants to avoid telling you about how unsafe you are when you fly. According to the article, when an $8.5M safety study of about 24,000 pilots indicated an alarming number of near collisions and runway incidents, NASA refused to release the results. The article quotes one congressman as saying 'There is a faint odor about it all.' A friend of mine who is a general aviation pilot responded to the article by saying 'It's scary but no surprise to those of us who fly.'"

Comments

Close calls

[BWJones]

I fly a reasonable amount as a passenger (used to fly small private aircraft as well) on commercial airlines and I've seen quite a few planes that come by shockingly close. I was prepared early enough one day to get a reasonable pic out of a cheap little point and shoot here of another aircraft in reasonably close proximity, but this is by no means the closest I've seen planes fly to one another. One time flying over Columbia on this flight we followed *very* close to another large commercial airliner for quite some time. It was hard to get a picture given it was at night with a little point and shoot, but it was close enough for me to see people in windows in-between flashes of lightning. Granted this was in controlled conditions as we were flying almost in formation, but I've also seen planes flash by in close proximity flying in the opposite direction as well. Much closer than the 3-5 mile limit I understood was in place.

Given the increasing amount of air traffic, I would not be surprised to see incidents (not comforting given upcoming travel), but the shocking thing is that the FAA (and the public) is still dealing with a completely antiquated air traffic control system that like other aspects of our national infrastructure is woefully lacking, particularly around large airports.

Re:Is it really NASA who is witholding info?

[richdun]

Not to mention that as a matter of jurisdiction, this is much more an FAA area than a NASA one. NASA has been interested in air safety to help with studies into personal air vehicles (the "virtual" lanes in the sky idea, for instance), but if airliners are having near-misses and such, that's FAA-regulated air traffic controllers or airport traffic patterns in question. I could see a certain interagency memo or a call to a higher-up in the administration from the FAA asking that this be kept quiet.

Close != close call

[EmbeddedJanitor]

If everyone is in their right airspace, even when packed closely, that is not a close call. How far was that jet away? A thousand ft or so? With no landmarks it is very hard to judge how far something is away.

A few years back I was on a flight from Seattle to LAX and with a very chatty pilot. He said something like "In a minute we'll be having a very close look at a Cessna xxx. You won't have much time to see it because it is going at aaa mph and they're going at bbb mph so the closing speed is... Don't worry folks, they are in their lane and we're in ours" and shortly later this plane came whipping past at what seemed like touching distance. Now that was clearly not a close call, but if the pilot had not talked about it we'd probably have thought it was.

Re:Close != close call

[dafradu]

Thats true. 1000 feet or 300 meters is the normal distance aircrafts must have between them.

This video shows two aircrafts 1000 feet apart passing by each other: http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=xpYD0higmxk

legal?

[baudbarf]

I'm often mistaken, so this may be no exception, but isn't NASA's work in the public domain since it is a federal agency? How can they refuse to release to the taxpayers the results of taxpayer funding? At least the military has the excuse of "national security"... what is NASA's explanation for this failure to deliver on a service they billed us for?

They also dont want you to know this...

[JackMeyhoff]

... http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=kapton+wiring+problems Kapton wiring by DuPont is a silent time bomb in most COMMERCIAL aircraft. This wiring is BANNED in MILITARY and NASA equipment but YOU fly surrounded by it not knowing the dangers.

Flying versus driving

[rpillala]

From Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and some journalist (available at Google Books):

If you are taking a trip and have the choice of driving or flying, you might wish to consider to consider the per-hour death rate of driving versus flying. It is true that many more people die in the United States each year in motor vehicle accidents (roughly forty thousand) than in airplane crashes (fewer than one thousand). But it is also true that most people spend a lot more time in cars than in airplanes. (More people die even in boating accidents each year than in airplane crashes; as we saw with swimming pools versus guns, water is a lot more dangerous than most people think.) The per-hour death rate of driving versus flying, however, is about equal.

The book contains a lot of that kind of analysis and is worth reading simply for the insight into incentives (which I found in the first chapter.)

Re:Fantasy? Not so much...

[radish]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd encourage to look at hard numbers rather than pulling guesses out of your ass. Take a look here.

What do I see right away? Well your belief that secondary roads are much safer than highways doesn't seem entirely right - for 2005 I see 44.5k deaths on major roads vs 56.5k deaths on smaller roads. A difference sure, but not all that massive.

The split by vehicle type is also rather interesting, deaths in 4/5 door hatchbacks (the "tiny-ass POS" that I happen to drive) amount to a massive 292, vs almost 28 thousand for your "safe" big-ass car, and no - that difference cannot be explained away by total numbers of vehicles on the road. Small cars are more stable, more agile, and often just better designed with regards to safety. At least that's my belief, and I've yet to see stats to counter that.