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NASA Releases Cryptic Airline Safety Data
An anonymous reader writes "NASA released part of a controversial study about air traffic safety Monday. The space agency spent $11 million on a survey of airline pilots. Agency officials were so disturbed by the findings that they intended to destroy the information rather than release it. But at an October congressional hearing, NASA administrator Michael Griffin changed tack and said the agency would release its findings. The research shows that safety problems occur far more often than previously recognized. NASA has been criticized however for not providing 'documentation on how to use its data, nor did it provide keys to unlock the cryptic codes used in the dataset.'"
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/proposed_classified_bill_will
Rep. John Haller (R-PA) introduces a bill that will allocate (classified) dollars over the next (classified) years to fight flesh-eating (classified).
I'm going to print out the PDF and masturbate to it. If no-one knows how to interpret the data, I'll do it in a sexy way.
NASA lost 2 of their 5 space-worthy shuttles. Are these really the people we should be listening to about safety?
I think our retarded media has more to do with government secrecy then any conspiracy. I'm a pilot. None of this data is surprising, unexpected, or really, in any way new. However, the retards at fox news and CNN will spin this to sell add space instead of to show how safe aviation really is. As in ... Oh my GOD!!!! the airplanes were 4.8 miles apart instead of 5 miles. Panic!!!!!
"Earlier characterizations from people who have seen the results said they would show that events like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than previously recognized. Such information could not be gleaned from the 16,208 pages posted by NASA on its Web site, however, because of information that was edited out. "
Your tax dollars at work.
his reminds me of the time President Bush dismissed an EPA http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/03/tech/main510920.shtml? Bush dismisses global warming warning on global sarming as the work of the the bureaucracy.
So, the first 1500 pages seem to be one or two columns of data on the pilots involved (# of flight hours?) The next 1000 pages are incident reports (planes 1 thru 6, but mostly 1 or 2 planes,) with so few columns you can't tell who, what, or when the incident occurred.
Hey, NASA, thanks a lot.
(oh, and if you're worried about people using a modified/hacked data set, publish a hash on your website.)
"[the agency shall] provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof."
Of course, then people could see that the important columns are missing.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
I am one of those anonymous pilots who has filed a NASA ASRA report. My report was not of coming close to hitting another aircraft. It was because of a violation of airspace (NASA's own Moffett Field) as a result of Air Traffic Controller mis-communication/hand off. While the pilot is ultimately responsible for communicating with ATC. This program was designed to be anonymous. It provided pilots with a way to discuss issues without having to be identified. This was designed to improve safety. I completely agree with this idea as it frees the pilot from having to come to call for reporting things that could be potentially hazardous or failures within the system. Unfortunately today, lawyers are always searching out new ways to prove negligence. Protecting pilots trying to help is even more important! In the aviation community, there is very little true negligence. Many husbands/spouses of pilots killed sue people after the pilot flew into a mountainside. Why? Because nobody knows why, and there could be many defendants (Airframe, engine, altimeter, radio navigation, radio communication, transponder, ATC (FAA/Government), Spark Plug manger, carberator, etc). Yes, they sue them all because if the jury thinks that any one person might possibly be responsible, it's millions. It's cheaper and/or a safer bet to sue than to buy life insurance it seems these days. I wouldn't mind if they released categoried data, ie, Phase: LANDING, Situation: NEAR MISS, Key 1: Distance, Value 1: 1500ft, etc... IE, you just say what happened, and nothing more. This is what the government really needs. I haven't reviewed all of the data, but, this is very reasonable in the light of trying to determine what is going wrong.
More interesting data that was released is here: http://www.nasa.gov/news/reports/NAOMS_air_carrier_survey_data.html
Although - these are really just answers to questions. I've spent some time going through the various links and I don't see anything that describes the questions that most of the columns relate to - although this file seems to contain the most information about the results. http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/207238main_NAOMS%20Reference%20Report_508.pdf
Two aircraft close to within 4.5 miles of one another when the safety zone is 5 miles. It gets logged as a near miss. The planes divert because secondary safety systems send alerts to pilots and traffic controllers who take appropriate action.
Is this proof that that the system is unsafe? Seems to me that something went wrong, safety systems kicked in, people took action as trained, and a problem was mitigated. So, the safety zone being 5 miles paid off. All went well. That's why we have a 5 mile safety zone and not a 4 mile one (or two, or whatever).
Congratulations to the safety engineers, the pilots, and traffic controllers. Through their training, planning, and risk assessment the practices and procedures were in place to handle a mishap and not result in a tragedy.
I recall the last few years of service of the Maine Yankee power plant not far from here. One day there was some kind of problem. Safety systems came in to play. The plant was shut down. Nobody was hurt. Nothing dangerous was released. All was well. Some people screamed at the danger of having the plant around. To me, this made no sense. I say the engineers and operators should have been celebrated for having built something that continued to be safe even as its lifespan was drawing to and end. All the safety systems still worked and everyone went home that night to their families.
Does the system need overhaul? Surely it does. I happen to know a few people who work for the FAA. One is a controller and the other some kind of inspector who flies around a lot and is in charge of some things. I hear stories from them -- though nothing specific -- and I know the stress they're under. We all know the stories off the equipment in use in those towers being insanely antiquated.
Still and all, these things only prove that to keep thing safe, we're losing efficiency. There is no evidence that we're sacrificing safety. Thousands of these massive things scream down runways at hundreds of miles and hour then leap into the sky propelled by unimaginable forces --all in close quarters to one another -- day in and day out. What a marvel of safety and a triumph of engineering.
I'm looking forward to my next flights -- all but the stupid TSA part anyway.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Back in the day (60s) NASA did a lot of safety work and one of the things that came out of it was the scientific analysis of fatigue. The whole set of transportation rules (trucks, trains, airplane) that deal with fatigue, such as limits on duty days came from this. They identified short and long-term fatigue. Now your airline pilot is certain to be safe from a fatigue standpoint, but your surgeon might be on his 49t hour awake, but that's for another discussion. Next they determined that pilots are so in fear of getting in trouble that they keep information about mistakes to themselves. "Hey!" someone wondered. Let's take this and use it as an incentive. So they came up with a program where if you screwed up, if you told them about what happened and your recommendation to keep it from happening again, they would give you immunity from getting in trouble. A flood of these reports started coming in (like the one from the previous poster yahoo who busted airspace and blames it on a controller). Now these are anonymous. The form that comes back is a receipt with your identifying info taken off of it. But...it's not hard to tell that an Airbus 319 heading from Denver to Chicago at 9:00 at night on November 30th belongs to...Frontier Airlines. And then the pilots can be identified through their flight time...and that's about as appealing to pilots as posting their medical records on line. The rabble-rousing reporters don't understand the program, the benefits or the rationale behind it. Publishing the data isn't going to make our airspace safer, it's going to ensure a drop in participation (I don't want to see my name in the headlines...especially if I am in an accident and an investigative reporter data mines the records to find the NASA reports I made, don't think it won't happen). Most of the reports are for altitude busts (you get in trouble if you cause a "deal", or a loss of separation with another airplane), mistakenly crossing a runway when not authorized or for getting your paperwork screwed up. Interestingly, one of the first articles to come out from this debate was about a flight crew who fell asleep on the way to Denver and reported it to NASA. No, they didn't get in trouble, but a reporter figured out that it was a Frontier flight (that's why I used the example) and it's no secret who was assigned to that flight, any Frontier employee could look up the records on the computer. Do you think those guys are going to ever file a report again? Both NASA and the NTSB do a good job making recommendations. The airlines and their hand-puppet, the FAA do a very good job of ignoring them.
There are 3 phases to flight, ascent cruise and descent, from what I understand most of the silent events occur
during the take-off and landing stages in both cases the secondary systems have to kick-in because either the
pilot was pulling up too fast and as a result would have hit the tail on runway for take-off, or they were landing
with an awkward angle.
In both cases the system automatically kicks in and "attempts" to rectify the situation. The trouble is there is a
calculation it does relating to a "projected" state of the aircraft and what kind of counter maneuvers have to be
executed in order to get out of that state.
If it decides the number or the sensitivity of the maneuvers is beyond what a human can do within the necessary
time span it kicks-in and helps out - that fact is recorded on the CMU and on the blackbox most often than not its
ignored by the FAA and the airlines. for the most part the bells and whistles occur when there is a possibility of
a mid-air collision or if the aircraft is descending at a rate that not considered safe.
As for cruise, when considering a 747 traveling in bad weather with flaky radar at about 850km/hr the distance traveled
in 10secs is roughly 2.3km, in that 10seconds the pilots may be required to execute a series of very complex maneuvers,
the unfortunate situation is when someone with years of experience freezes or makes the wrong decisions under pressure/stress,
such human weaknesses make these systems a necessity.
The point I wanted to make was that the TCAS data collected both in the US and Europe are not being used to better
train/filter-out pilots.
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
if you're interested in airline safety, there's a guy named "Stuck Mic" that posts a good bit on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=stuckmic best i remember, he's either an air traffic controller(or was), and some of the problems go all the way back to the illegal controller strike back during the Reagan Administration. seems there's been an effort under way ever since to replace controllers with an automated system, with the results being that more money goes into the automation effort than actually training and paying a sufficient number of people to do the job. fwiw, i don't have a dog in this fight, just found it interesting. i'm sure there's three sides to everything. they also have a website here: http://www.stuckmic.com/
You trust software developers who cannot handle even checking null pointers to fly your plane? I sure don't from my experience in the software industry. I get nervous when I fly high tech, I am more and more a analogue kinda guy rather than techie nowdays for good reason.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
I once flew out of Chicago, early 1990s, 737 IIRC, where coming up off the runway the plane banked *hard* like I've never experienced before or after. It felt like a 30 degree bank, but it was probably more like 5 degrees, the human mind tends to exaggerate slopes so badly. The G force exceeded anything I've ever felt on a runway. At the crazy angle (I was on the down-wing side) the flight attendants strapped in beside the exit doors seemed like they were a floor or two above me. I was concentrating on keeping my head centered at the top of my neck, so I didn't orient myself to ground features. People gasped, but no-one vocalized. Not even a kick in the aft to lift out of Denver on a hot summer day would compare to G-force we were pulling. The plane seemed to also pitch nose upward and climb hard. It was smooth, forceful, and disorienting. I had visions of children tearing the wings off a fly. Those wings really are amazingly strong. Then the plane smoothly returned to level flight.
Moments later, with no hesitation at all, the pilot came onto the intercom in the most baritone lounge-chair voice you can imagine:
"I just had a chat with air traffic who told me they would feel a lot more comfortable if I banked to the right. I said to myself 'if they're more comfortable, then I'm more comfortable' so we did. Now we're all feeling very comfortable. It should be a smooth ride into Toronto, so relax and enjoy the in-flight service."
No doubt we were bearing toward Baltimore as he spoke and air traffic was still busy determining how to turn him around again.
I also wondered what additional service is required when they ping the G ball for 15 seconds like that. I just found a web page that states that the g-force limit of a 737 is unknown. Fortunately, the answer wasn't recovered from the flight recorder of the plane I was on that day.
My father was once on a flight that dumped fuel over the ocean, circled back, and landed five minutes after takeoff. I've always suspected that incidents were more frequent than the airline industry wishes to publicize. I wonder if that smooth recovery speech is part of the pilot simulator training. I wonder if he was giving us that speech while the copilot was checking out the lights that indicate the wings are indeed still attached.
Why is it that you can't see a difference between internally investigating and correcting something as a routine review process and publicly declaring an entire industry to be rife with major safety issues and destined for disaster?
Clearly they are two different things.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
to those of us on the plane. One time, flying out of MSP, we pulled on the runway to takeoff, and then sharply pulled back off to the left. Since I was on the left side of the plane, I looked out the window. Low and behold, another large jet just about to land on us, coming in for a landing. Wow.
The pilot comes on, and says some bullshit about weather ahead and we're going to wait a few more minutes. I wanted to yell out 'Someone nearly got us killed, you lying sack of crap!', but likely that would get me thrown off the plane.
So whenever I hear the pilot come on, and tell some shit about weather or turbulence, or why the plane is delayed, I don't believe a word of it now. I think that's the part that pisses me off most, to know we're not being dealt with at an adult and honest level.