The
press story cited was from:
Stephen Dinan, "FAA safety data kept hidden from inspectors"
_
The Washington Times_, December 26, 2013.
Edit: here's the source-rpt from the Dot-IG
DOT - FAA?s Safety Data Analysis and Sharing System Shows Progress, but More Advanced Capabilities and Inspector Access Remain Limited | Office of Inspector General
December 18, 2013
FAA’s Safety Data Analysis and Sharing System Shows Progress, but More Advanced Capabilities and Inspector Access Remain Limited
. . . Project ID: AV-2014-017
pdf is 28-pages:
http://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/dot/fil...t^12-18-13.pdf
Note FAA's
expanded definition of "ASIAS" -- which now
includes both FOQA and
ASAP; the
IG's report includes a nice history (post-fatal changes) to the FAA's ASIAS, and planned improvements.
This recent DoT-IG report of Dec'18th (incident-data hidden) echos findings of the Rand Report ,
Safety ... NTSB Aviation Accident Investigations....
pdf 72pgs,
[pg 40]
. . . resolving more complex accidents depends upon a thorough knowledge of prior incidents.... only a small portion of the NTSB’s aviation resources are focused on incident events. NTSB investigators rarely access outside data sources that describe incidents, and when a fatal accident occurs, NTSB’s staff is frequently unaware of previous significant events.... the historically light treatment of incidents means that important safety monitoring is not performed. Investigations are also hampered, because investigators are not up to speed when an accident occurs....
Layers of oversight, audit, ect, -- Note the mention of:
--
DoT's IG,
-- the FAA's
Office of Audit and Evaluation
For mishap "investigators" working with USAF there is the critical review of the
DoD's IG.
But for some folks in mishap-investigation there is no oversight.
For the privileged staff at USA's
"independent" NTSB there is NO audit permitted, NO IG review, NO Scientific Ombudsman, nor any means of congressional oversight (other than funding-$$); see the Ninth Circuit
Court Decision, citing the NTSB staff's "unreviewable discretion":
"... the NTSB's complete discretion to conduct its investigations as it sees fit.... that unreviewable discretion...."
Hiding data -- that helps the airlines.
FOQA? --
ASAP? _ EDIT_: See the
IG's rpt, for a current update on FOQA and ASAP, and future plans, eg pgs 2-6.
If any pilot thinks that filing that ASAP report will solve a non-compliance-problem (with managers) at his airline, or at his airline's POI, then consider that your ASAP-notice just gave the airline & its
faa-CMO a "
get-out-of-jail-free".
Another fault of the
ASAP (incident reporting) program was the "protection": conceived as protection for the reporting-pilot, the FAA and the Airline instead wanted that "protection" feature for the "product" of the ERC, thus suppressing the
ERC's "review" rpt (completely defeating the purpose of ASAP as an organizational-corrective). For example,
an ARC-incident & ASAP-reports reveal the company/
FAA-CMO joint non-compliance with the "energy management element" of FAA's Stabilized Approach standard for TURBOJETs (
"engines spooled-up") -- but the local-ERC (company &
CMO-regulator) elects to not acknowledge their own non-compliance; and then that local-ERC close-out that ASAP-review, with no other oversight of their local ASAP-program: no lesson-learned, no corrective action at the operator, no err-recognition by the wider-FAA.