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 News from Around the Americas | October 2007 
NASA Plans to Reveal Air Safety Study After All
 Mike Nizza - The Lede
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Will the contents of NASA’s controversial study of civil aviation safety prompt more public fears than the cover-up did? The answer is apparently in the offing. The chief of the aeronautics agency, Michael D. Griffin, has decided to end its insistence on keeping the study secret, according to The Associated Press.
The news broke in Mr. Griffin’s prepared remarks to be delivered at a Congressional hearing this afternoon. Matthew L. Wald, who covers transportation for The New York Times, will be writing about it later today.
In a Week in Review article on Sunday, Mr. Wald explained why NASA tried to avoid releasing the data in the first place:
Economists have been able to quantify [fear about air travel]. After Pan Am 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, trans-Atlantic passenger traffic fell by 20 percent in the next year.
That figure was cited in a risk/benefit analysis published by the F.A.A. in July 2001 justifying a new security rule. The benefit of keeping bombs off airplanes, the agency said then, was not only that a plane and its passengers would be saved, but also that travelers would not be frightened into staying home. The F.A.A. called it “the known reaction of Americans to any aircraft operator disaster.” |
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