Pilot, 1st Officer Slept While Approaching Denver, Lawmaker Says

[redacted]

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers meeting about airline safety Wednesday heard about a government report that described a commercial pilot and his first officer falling asleep at the wheel 60 miles outside from Denver, and careening toward the airport at twice the speed allowed.

Rep. Bart Gordon , D-Tenn. demanded to know why this information was available on a system available to the public, known as ASRA, but NASA refused to release the information from a separate survey conducted in an $11 million program called the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service.

The hearing was called after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration initially refused to release the NAOMS survey saying it could affect the public confidence commercial air travel.

Lawmakers have been pushing for the NAOMS survey to be made public because it is such a wide-reaching report, and it is statistically sound, unlike the ASRS system, which is based on self-reporting.

Gordon, the chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, held the hearing Wednesday to hold NASA officials' feet to the fire over the issue. He argued that if a report like the one he cited is available publicly, that NASA's scientific survey should be released, too.

"This is up on the Internet. This is available to everybody ... Now this is just one of the thousands of reports that identify the airport, sometime the approximate time, aircraft, runway numbers. This material is public so why should your survey not be public?" Gordon asked.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2C307019%2C00.html

[Initech]

1. I dont know what airline that is, but you wont see me on it!

:wow:

[gateley]

2. A friend of mine who was a flight attendant for United said she went into

the cockpit and the Pilot and Co-pilot were both asleep. Luckily they were at high altitude and on auto-pilot. It probably happens more often than we think.

By keeping this secret so as not to alarm the public, it's also serving to enable events like this to occur.

"They" need to stop deciding what's 'best for us'.