#1 2007-10-22 19:17:56
File under: "What You Don't Know Can't Hurt You...As Long as You Tuck Your Head Between Your Legs."
Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.
NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly... (source)
This was nearly as confounding as Sioux City's recent decision to keep its airport code (warning: links to SFgay-te), despite being offerred a perfectly serviceable one that has somehow remained unused since the dawn of contemporary aviation.
Go figure. And keep your tray-tables upright.
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#2 2007-10-23 01:05:17
not to jinx us - but is has been a very long time since we've had any kind of air disaster - could this be more media frenzy creation?
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#3 2007-10-23 09:37:44
The thought crossed my mind, but the suggestion here is that--whatever the actual number may be--it's big enough to appall, but small enough for Americans to get skittish. As if hurtling through the air at 36,000 feet in an aluminum tube isn't inherently dangerous enough, we now have to confront the fact that the NTSB just got out of a limo without its panties on. While there have been no major disasters in recent memory, there have been five small plane crashes in the past week, alone.
Seattle, Edmonton, Alaska, Oklahoma, and at least one in Australia.
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#5 2007-10-25 04:46:17
Oh, hell. Private plane crashes in Alaska are no big deal. They happen numerous, numerous times every year. Since Alaska has the highest per capita number of private planes in the country, there are opportunities galore (Galore!) for crashes, and crash they do. 
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