NASA Administrator Screws Up, Big Time!

This seems to be my week to write complaints.

As a tax payer I will jump in the middle of politicians and/or bureaucrats in general with reckless abandon, this is one of those times.

The TV and newspapers have both taken up the gauntlet having to do with NASA’s high handed attitude that the federal government will follow we citizens from the cradle to the grave and this is a prime example of just that!

NASA in the form of her bureaucratic administrator, Michael Griffin, has said that he will reconsider how much of an $8.5 million federal safety project of interviews with about 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over the past four years. This project has to do with problems like near collisions and runway interference are occurring more frequently than previously recognized.

Well, whoop de do!

He is fearful that it would upset air travelers and hurt airline profits. With the exception of a couple of airlines, the CEO’s of them seem to be doing a darn good job of “hurting” their profits, and this is no secret.

Back to the point. Our congress has ordered him and his folks to not destroy any of his records and the says he has already ordered that all the survey data be preserved.

The surveyed pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near collisions in the air and runway obstructions as other government monitoring systems show, and a higher than expected numbers of pilots who had experienced “in-close approach changes” (last minute instructions to alter landing plans). In aviation jargon it sounds a bit like “Oh! s--t!”

As a tax paying, general aviation pilot, and subscriber to the Austin American Statesman, I want to express my sincere thanks to this newspaper for running this as a front page and extremely comprehensive article.

To the editorial staff, “You may just have saved a pilots life by printing this information”. I guarantee that this is being e-mailed all over the country and posted prominently in the pilots areas at local airports, my thanks to you and the Associated Press that spent over 14 months obtaining the data under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

My final comment is that I am furious that a federal agency through it’s Administrator , could withhold information that affects thousands of American commercial and general aviation pilots and their families.

Shame on you.