Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
How is this really that bad? Even when the pilots suck, and the traffic controllers are asleep at the helm we still manage to be safer then driving. Seems to me like flying is pretty damn safe, and even better if everyone is paying attention to whats going on.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
The drive to the airport.
Flying is so much safer than driving to the airport it is not even funny.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Is it really NASA as a whole. Keep in mind that until a year or so ago a single Bush-appointed kid was responsible for censoring all of NASA's press releases about basic science. The kid in question had no college degree, no background in science, and his sole qualification appeared to be having been head of the Texas young republicans at his school. This despite opposition from most of NASA.
Not to sound like some NASA apologist or something but in my experience with large institutions many of the things done "by NASA" or some other group are often the work of one or a few key individuals and many times may run counter to the very goals of the institution and most people involved in it. It wouldn't surprise me if the political appointee that replaced the kid is doing this.
"When two planes almost collide, they call it a near miss....IT'S A NEAR HIT! A collision is a near miss...::BOOM::...look, they nearly missed."
Living With a Nerd
But I'll let you know when I am.
Air travel is like hot dogs. Ignorance is bliss.
Seriously though, I try to remind myself that the pilots are just as interested in getting to the destination in one piece as I am.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
I live within 10 miles of a major airport, and within 3 miles of a smaller "business" airport. Three nights ago I was outside on my balcony watching the sky and saw two planes coming from opposite directions converging towards one another. At first I was thinking, "Hmmm, those look like they're at relatively close altitude.". This quickly turned into "Are they really supposed to be flying like that?".
Very quickly thereafter, the planes are close enough that I realize one of them is a jumbo jet and the other is a small business commuter plane.
From what I could see on the ground, the planes passed through what appeared to be the same spot in the sky within about 4 seconds of one another. I was utterly astounded. Could it be that they really weren't communicating because they were from different airports? The biggest surprise is that there weren't any other planes in the area that I could see, so what was the need for their paths to converge like that?
why is NASA doing this? Isn't this the domain of the FAA and NTSB?
"I wish to God these calculations would have been made by steam." -Charles Babbage
"'There is a faint odor about it all.' "
Isn't that like Pigpen remarking on someone's bathing habits?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Amazing. Once upon a time, the only valid reason for withholding information was if it would affect the nation's security. Now, "commercial welfare" is just as valid as "national security".
How many other documents can now be hidden from public view, given the low bar of "could materially affect the public confidence"? Apparently, if you're not "confident", you're with the terrorists!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
NASA keeps a voluntary database of incidents/accidents and safety concerns from pilots. The idea is that it can be totally anonymous. They want pilots to feel free to report safety concerns without fear of being fired or discriminated against by their current airline. The database is fully on-line and you can search it. Look at the facts: The American airline industry completes thousands of flights every day without a single issue. That is friggen AMAZING! The ATC has a very hard job, and they do it well. A big part of why things are so safe is the over-zealous approach pilots (most pilots) take to safety. There are several different ways to report problems. If you are at a major airport and break the rules (in a small plane for example) you can usually expect an FAA inspector to meet you at the tarmac to pull your ticket on the spot. If you don't take safety seriously word gets around fast. Your fellow pilots don't appreciate it.
http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/
This program has been going for years and years. It helps make the skies above you safer. If there is an increase it is likely due to one of the major trends affecting aviation today. Fewer airports, more airplanes with smaller passenger sizes, more flights, younger pilots, etc. I highly doubt NASA is trying to deep-six some scary fact, they probably just didn't want to pay to deal with the fallout from a service that costs them dollars. They do it for free in the interest of safety. They should be applauded for their years of service to the aviation industry.
Keep in mind that the ASRS is in ADDITION to the NTSB and FAA programs for saftey (which also has searchable online-database).
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?
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
... 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.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Is it a "near miss" when a collision is narrowly avoided? or is it a "near miss" when two planes pass closer than they should to each other, but were really in no real danger of colliding? For example, on the freeway, cars sometimes swerve towards another car, then realize what they are doing, and move back into the center of their lane. Is that a "near accident," or just a normal occurrence? I'm serious about this. I'd really like to know what counts as a "near miss."
Isn't the safety of an activity determined by the number of actual accidents, and not by the number of near-accidents?
:-). However, I often find myself in the situation of almost making an accident.
For example, I've been driving about 14 years without ever causing an accident (or at least, none that I was involved in to know of
Fo example, you start to do a lane change, and suddenly, before you actually enter the other lane, you notice another car there, and abort the lane change. The point of driving experience and skill is it also helps you to cope with the near-accidents that your driving skills failed to prevent.
Surely something similar is relevant to flying too?
Important hint: DON'T PICK THE FISH.
Are you adequate?
NASA cares quite a bit about commercial air travel. Remember that the second 'A' stands for Aeronautics. NASA is quite involved in air traffic control research. The FAA's job is usually more current and practical in nature.
Our AC friend above is 100% spot on-- vertical seperation allows much closer distances, both because altimeters are far more accurate and because vertical position doesnt change as quickly (think about it-- A jet can cover several miles within a pilots reaction time since it is traveling at ~600 mph-- Even if the engines failed completely, it would take longer to lose altitude.)
Everywhere I've worked has been populated by slackers, incompetents and other people not doing their job fully. Why is surprising then that as it turns out, the airline industry is the same? Is it any surprise that corners are cut, that communication isn't always good and that faulty assumptions are made? It's this where everywhere. IF you're surprised by this, have you ever left your house and worked?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
...inexplicable rise in the number of home-made Nigerian helicopters and Sputniks crowding the airspace.
> pilots said airlines were unaware how frequently safety incidents
> occurred that could lead to serious problems or even crashes,
> The survey's purpose was to develop a new way of tracking
> safety trends and problems the airline industry could address.
> revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence
> in airlines and affect airline profits.
So NASA, worried the industry could be overlooking some bugs, initiated a code review with the intent of creating a bug-tracking system. Four years and $8.5 million later, the project presumably completed, they didn't release - because it would expose bugs?
I wouldn't have thought it was NASA's role to cover-up airline industry problems. I'd expect airline industry non-sequitors like this to have been performed by the FAA and NTSB. NASA should restrict itself to losing their own design plans, and occasionally mucking up english-metric conversions.
Because it is (a) too damned expensive to put in rail lines and (b) the current system is slow enough most people can drive to their destinations faster, for less (gas) money.
If we still had legions of penny-a-day, disposable immigrants and virtually no opposition to laying track through high-value suburbs then we might have the ability to put in light rail. But we don't...on either count...so it will never happen. Rail is phenomenally expensive to put in, and nobody wants it in their back yard. It will never be commercially viable in the US except in dense areas (which, not too surprisingly, is what much of Europe looks like).
Also, high-speed rail has the same annoying problem as high-speed internet - the last mile is very tough to cover. Airports have that problem, too, but rail is going to have to do _better_ to compensate for the inherent slower travel speeds.
Besides - more rail traffic means more chances of collision, and I would guess (though I can't back it up) that there have been more US rail crashes in the last 5 years than US commercial airline crashes (including both passenger and freight).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Growing up we had a saying referring to how close something came to almost happening, but didn't ...
"Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
The airliner in that picture on your blog is not violating any recommended practices. The 3-5 miles is typical following distance for airliners on the same path, which allows time for potentially dangerous wake turbulence to dissipate. For planes whose paths do not intersect (in the 3-D environment, not merely 2-D), much, much closer passes can safely occur. The plane you show was at least 1000 feet higher than your own, a standard separation for planes awaiting landing clearance, and not on the same flight path.
Whatever may be in NASA's report (I suspect it's mostly the collisions it refers to are mostly taxiway and tarmac incidents), does not change the fact that the airlines are still the safest way to travel by a large margin. Over the past 20 years, your odds of dying in a commerical airline accident were about 1 in 5 million per flight (multiply by number of flights you take in life for net risk). Your odds of dying on the road are about 1 in 50 (net risk).
There was an article in Air & Space magazine in the last month or so about runway incursions (being in the wrong taxiway, or worse on the wrong active runway, or crossing when you shouldn't. It was a pretty scary article, and it discussed the things they are trying to do to make sure the pilots turn when they should, and do not when they shouldn't. Bottom line, is the FAA has spent a lot of money and time, but hasn't got a good solution yet...
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
add this to the fact that air controllers still use equipment that employs vaccuum tubes, which have an opportunity to break down thousands of time per second, we've got a possible crisis on our hands. I'd to think what would happen if all air traffic control was lost at JFK or any other international airport.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were capable of staying awake long enough.
Riding in a motor vehicle on city streets is a good deal more dangerous. For many Americans it's substantially the most dangerous thing they're willing to do EVER, and yet they do it many times a day.
Of course, there's *some* risk in _anything_ you do. Playing sports and working out, for instance, are likely to get you injured, but sitting at home all the time will buy you poor health twenty or forty years down the line. There's no such thing as a completely safe activity.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Even this study, which the AP was quick to hit the panic button about, states that your odds of dying on any given airline flight is one in 4.5 million. Your odds of dying in any sort of air travel accident in your liftetime (on average...obviously, odds vary according to how often you fly) are about one in 20,000. You odds of dying in a car are about one in a hundred. Your odds of dying in an airliner hijacked by terrorists are about 1 in 55 million. So, obviously, the government is spending billions to combat terrorism, millions on air safety, and hardly anything on automotive safety.
Does anyone in government ever bother to READ the reports they spend so much time and money writing and classifying?
The FAA, NTSB, ATC, Military and NASA all have their various "official" reporting systems for accidents, runway incursions, near misses, etc. etc. - but the idea behind this survey was to get a little bit more of a "frank" idea of what's going on - if stuff isn't reported - if incedents don't need to be reported - and to check if there are problems in the system.
(As a student-pilot) I firmly believe that pilots, if interviewed anonymously, would be more than willing to offer any information, or bend anyone's ear as to what the problems are and how to make things safer. If people are "on-the-record" doing this - everyone jumps into the "CYA" mentality.
Are you just looking for someone to blame, or do you really want to know the truth??
I was born and lived in San Diego until I was 13. I vividly recall what was then the worst commercial airline accident, a mid-air collision between PSA Flight 182 that was coming in for a landing to Lindbergh Field, and a Cessna, in September of 1978.
The Cessna took out the wing of the larger plane, causing it, of course, to burst in flames. 182 crashed in the middle of a residential neighborhood, killing 7 on the ground and creating what is still one of the largest fires in the county.
Not that any crash is good, but ones created by collisions in the middle of residential neighborhoods have to be among the worst. There was video at the time of flaming bodies that fell out of the plane. Local authorities picked up body parts out of backyards and rooftops for several weeks after the crash. It was a gruesome event.
The crash was created by two sets of pilots who failed to maintain good visual contact with each other. The PSA pilots knowingly ignored the other plane and the little plane--piloted by a student pilot if it matters--stopped its visual assessment of the larger commercial plane. The PSA plane was basically directly above the Cessna as it ascended and came into its flight path as the big plane descended. I imagine the student pilot simply didn't lean forward far enough to see the big jet directly above it. He probably thought it was out of his vector but instead made a fatal assumption. Likewise, the PSA pilots didn't look down to keep a good eye on the little plane that was heading their way. There is some evidence to suggest that the PSA pilots, however, didn't have good information from the tower on which plane they should be looking for and where it was.
Lindbergh Field has a reputation for being one of the least desirable airports to land at in the US because of the sharp angle of descent and its close proximity to major urban and residential areas. There's no "easy" approach to land there.
I hunch the guys on the ground with radar etc have a far better perspective of what is really going on than any "eye witness".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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.)
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
But seriously, thanks for posting. Real information from informed people is nice. I have a couple hours in a Cessna and over 20 in gliders (Grob 103, DG-1000 and 2-33). I felt safer during my first glider solo, towing with a slight crosswind and all, than during any of my driver's ed training.
ATL also does parallel approach. I was on a CRJ-200 with a 747-400 trailing on approach to the other runway...It made some passengers nervous. Come to think of it, IAD might too...
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
My personal experience in the past year:
* Taken 16 flights
* Experienced zero accidents or near incidents involving aircraft
* Witnessed zero accidents or near incidents involving aircraft
However:
* Witnessed three auto accidents en-route to airport
* Witnessed one auto accident en-route to home from airport
* Taxi driver taking me home from airport narrowly avoided a severe collision
Flying doesn't scare me in the slightest, but I sometimes find myself nervous when I have to fly. Can you guess from the above experiences why? Safety at the airport in my home town is scrutinised very closely and by all appearances seems to be top notch. On the other hand, the city seems to have no qualms about planning several simultaneous construction projects along a single route, replete with inadequate road markings, constantly changing signal configurations and restricted lanes...which don't mix well at all with drivers who ignore the reduced speed limits and feel that they absolutely must not leave one or more car-length of space between themselves and the vehicle they are following, lest someone has the gall to cut in front of them.
The article of discussion here stated that there is one in-flight fatality per MILLIONS of departures--I bet more people die golfing than flying and certainly driving is several orders of magnitude more risky. Roads are WAY more crowded than runways and airspace, aircraft are in MUCH better condition and far more reliable than automobiles and pilots are FAR more skilled and competent than even some of the better drivers on the road.
It seems to me that even if NASA's interviews suggest incidents are under-reported by half that overall air safety is quite good and certainly not worth the alarmist tones by those involved. If there is ANYTHING about air travel we should be concerned about, beyond the hazardous road trip to the airport (if it isn't the construction-infested road to the airport at home it is the dangerously confusing interchanges and signage at other large airports), it is the screwed up state of security at airports. Recent surveys have shown that security gate personnel have been extremely good at confiscating grandma's knitting needles, threatening toiletries and risky bottles of Evian, but when it comes to REAL security they have been almost criminally neglectful.
For example, in LAX testers placed very obvious-looking bomb components into checked luggage (batteries with wires and circuitry attached, realistic-appearing explosives, etc) and 3 out of 4 times it cleared security. In the recent past air cargo security has been circumvented up to 90 percent of the time. At the airport I take off from regularly a mentally disturbed person scaled the perimiter fence, wandered onto the runways and tried to flag down a commercial jumbo jet preparing for takeoff. In Montreal a reporter crawled under a similar fence, got into an unlocked maintenance truck and started it up. Then he put on a smock and waled right into the CARA kitchen preparing food for the next departing flight posing as an inspector. Nobody questioned his presence, asked for ID or anything.
Trust me, if you were to be injured or killed during a flight--extremely unlikely as it is, you probably stand a greater chance of it being because some nutjob jihadist checked a bomb, or infiltrated airport security and poisoned the in-flight food, than because of mechanical failure or runway incursions or mid-air collisions or birds meeting their maker inside a jet engine.
Compare the number of plane trips per year and number of plane deaths with the number of car trips per year and the number of car deaths.
Hold on there a second, Statistics Boy.
First, let's consider my actual risk factors. What if I'm not under 25 (the age group that dies like flies in auto accidents)? Guess what, I'm an old fart, so I'm way (WAY) safer without lifting a finger. What if I travel mostly on interstate highways (much safer than secondary roads, by a huge margin)? Once again, I win without effort. What happens if I don't drive at night (much more hazardous than daytime driving, (a) because nobody can see, and (b) because every 10th driver is drunk)? Another win. What happens if I drive a big-ass car rather than a tiny-ass POS, so if I hit your tiny-ass POS I live and you die? What if I avoid driving in ridiculous weather? What if I maintain my vehicle well, I have antilock brakes/stability control, I have new tires, and I'm driving a relatively new vehicle instead of some junker? And so on. By the time I eliminate all the risk factors that the airlines INCLUDE in their road statistics, their numbers are meaningless. Let's turn the tables, shall we? OK, airlines, if you're going to include teenage hotrod and dead-drunk idiots in your road statistics, I'm gonna include all the private airplanes that are busy dropping out of the sky on a daily basis. Who wins now?
Second, the "safety" of airlines is always touted by considering total miles traveled, not TIME IN THE VEHICLE -- and of course they're counting all miles traveled, on all kinds of roadways, in all kinds of weather, in all kinds of vehicles. Hour for hour, trip for trip, you're WAY SAFER in a car than in an airplane.
And finally, the statistics are presented courtesy of the airline industry, which is highly motivated to make you think that it's perfectly safe to whizz around in some poorly-maintained piece of shit airframe that's been in service for 15 years and only indifferently maintained. Pardon me if I think they're shaving the numbers. They'd be idiots not to.
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.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
It's called a 'go-around' and happens thousands of times a day at airports across the globe. It is no cause for concern, simply a reflection of the imperfect timing of 'scheduled' flights.
In every case, simple procedure is followed; at controlled fields, the ATC will usually give the command to go around but the pilot has the discretion to do so if he thinks there could be a conflict (or even if he just doesn't feel like landing that approach). At major fields, the local procedures are followed or at other fields, full power is applied, a climb is established and a turn is made to the 'dead-side' (opposite side to the circuit side).
The only time I've ever seen a remotely 'tense' go-around was a video of a junior controller at London Heathrow with a slow-to-clear Airbus on the runway and a Concorde beating down short-final. Knowing the enormous fuel cost of a Concorde go-around, the controller tried to delay down to safe minimums but the Concorde pilot made the decision for him (probably out of courtesy) and initiated the go-around with a curt radio call "Speedbird One is going around" and moving into 'wet' (afterburner) power for the climb to make sure the Airbus pilot knew his place
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
What happens if I drive a big-ass car rather than a tiny-ass POS, so if I hit your tiny-ass POS I live and you die?
Right, so the solution to make roads safer is that we need to make sure everyone has a bigger than average car, right? Also, no matter how big your car is, if you strike a large enough concrete object or tree, you still die. Is your car also safe against people who run over red lights and hit you on the side?
Second, the "safety" of airlines is always touted by considering total miles traveled, not TIME IN THE VEHICLE
When you want to go from point A to point B, and you consider whether to do it by car of by plane, it's the *distance* that's constant, not the time.
Let's turn the tables, shall we? OK, airlines, if you're going to include teenage hotrod and dead-drunk idiots in your road statistics, I'm gonna include all the private airplanes that are busy dropping out of the sky on a daily basis. Who wins now?
Airplanes still win -- by a large amount.
About statistics, they should include everything, both for planes and for cars. "But what about the statistics of people who live on my street have my name and drive the same car as I do?" This is not statistics, this is anecdote.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
This is completely silly.
We know pretty accurately how dangerous flying is, on account of having a fairly good record of how many million people fly how many thousand miles a year, and knowing how many end up dead or injuried as a result.
If *almost* crashes where significantly up, you'd expect *actual* crashes to be similarily up. There's more than enough planes in the air that the law of average work just fine.