Our partners at C-HIT, a new investigative site from the Online Journalism Project, published a story Monday night examining the Aviation Safety Reporting System, a little-known national safety-reporting database run by NASA.
Among C-HIT’s findings:
- At least every two days, on average, a pilot, controller or other air-safety professional in Connecticut or nearby TF Green Airport in Rhode Island reports a safety lapse or concern to the NASA-run Aviation Safety Reporting System [ASRS], which is designed to detect dangerous patterns.
- Reports to the ASRS have climbed since 2001, both in Connecticut and nationally.
- Last year, 179 incident reports were submitted in Connecticut —an increase of about 40 percent over 2001. The reports, which are submitted voluntarily, comprise only a fraction of the true number of such events that occur, ASRS director Linda J. Connell says.
The story also details an incident from Oxford-Waterbury Airport:
- A pilot of a small plane flying just northeast of Waterbury-Oxford Airport in August 2009 reports being told by a Bradley controller, “Radar services terminated… contact NY approach if you want advisories.” The handoff causes the pilot confusion and puts the plane into significant turbulence:
“I wasn’t sure of my exact position, for two reasons: a) I’d been vectored around [Bradley] traffic for a while, and b) the turbulence was so rough that maintaining heading and altitude was taking up most of my attention,” the pilot reported. “It took a few minutes to raise NY Approach (they were busy); during this interval (after realizing I wouldn’t immediately make contact with NY Approach), I did a 90 right turn to try to avoid or get out of the Delta Airspace,’’ inside the airport boundary. “But I’m pretty sure I was inside the Delta at some point.”
