An $8.5 million NASA study of aviation safety consisting of detailed interviews with thousands of pilots found that commercial air travel is so unsafe it is refusing to release the results.

Doing so "could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey," the agency told the Associated Press.

Pilot interviews lasted about 30 minutes, with standardized questions about how frequently they encountered equipment problems, smoke or fire, engine failure, passenger disturbances, severe turbulence, collisions with birds or inadequate tower communication, according to documents obtained by the AP.

and

Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Nice to see that the Bush Administration is more interested in protecting the "commercial welfare of the air carriers" than in telling the people who paid for the survey how safe it is to fly.