National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service

A further contribution to the Aviation Safety Monitoring and Modeling project provided yet another method for gathering data and crunch­ing numbers in the name of making the Nation’s airspace safer amid increasingly crowded skies. Whereas the Aviation Safety Reporting System involved volunteered safety reports and the Performance Data Analysis and Reporting System took its input in real time from digital data sources, the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service was a scientifically designed survey of the aviation community to generate statistically valid reports about the number and frequency of incidents that might compromise safety.[242]

After a survey was developed that would gather credible data from anonymous volunteers, an initial field trial of the NAOMS was held in 2000, followed by the launch of the program in 2001. Initially, the sur­veyors only sought out air carrier pilots who were randomly chosen from the FAA Airman’s Medical Database. Researchers characterized the response to the NAOMS survey as enthusiastic. Between April 2001 and December 2004, nearly 30,000 pilot interviews were completed, with a remarkable 83-percent return rate, before the project ran short of funds and had to stop. The level of response was enough to achieve statistical validity and prove that NAOMS could be used as a perma­nent tool for managers to assess the operational health of the ATC sys­tem and suggest changes before they were actually needed. Although NASA and the FAA desired for the project to continue, it was shut down on January 31, 2008.[243]

It’s worth mentioning that the NAOMS briefly became the sub­ject of public controversy in 2007, when NASA received a Freedom of Information Act request by a reporter for the data obtained in the NAOMS survey. NASA denied the request, using language that then NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said left an "unfortunate impression” that the Agency was not acting in the best interest of the public. NASA eventually released the data after ensuring the anonymity originally guaranteed to those who were surveyed. In a January 14, 2008, letter from Griffin to all NASA employees, the Administrator summed up the experience by writing: "As usual in such circumstances, there are les­sons to be learned, remembered, and applied. The NAOMS case dem­onstrates again, if such demonstrations were needed, the importance of peer review, scientific integrity, admitting mistakes when they are made, correcting them as best we can, and keeping our word, despite the crit­icism that can ensue.”[244]