What is required for a NASA report?

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N9406U

Filing Flight Plan
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Do you need to (or should) fill out the blank for the airport? Is some of it optional?
 
I filled one out once and I was told to be as vague as possible, I Don't recall why but at the time the reasoning made sense. Let me think and see if I can recall.
 
Don't forget to staple an envolpe to the form containing your shredded pilots license. Joking. Wonder if they've ever declined the get out of jail feature because of vagueness?
 
ClimbnSink said:
Don't forget to staple an envolpe to the form containing your shredded pilots license. Joking. Wonder if they've ever declined the get out of jail feature because of vagueness?
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I've only heard of the "immunity factor" being disallowed when the violation was deemed an intentional act. Meaning, the pilot really, really should have known better. IIRC, in the case I'm thinking about, the pilot seemed to be a real d--k about it.
 
I think the being vague is to broaden the umbrella.

I was with a friend and we landed at a closed airport one time and we were told not to say "We were flying to XYZ field to get fuel" but rather we were in the area and made an unscheduled stop at a closed field.

I believe the idea is to prevent "So you took off and headed there without getting all the required information"

This way it is more of an unplanned stop along the way and can be deemed a bit more understandable

That is the best I can recall. There may have been more reasoning behind keeping it vague. It has been awhile.
 
That's kind of what I was thinking, the more vague, the better. But I was wondering about loosing immunity or something...
 
Lying about what you were doing or what you did negates the purpose of the NASA form. If you landed at a closed field cause you forgot to check NOTAMS, that shows that there should be a better emphasis on training people on the importance of checking NOTAMS.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I filled one out once and I was told to be as vague as possible, I Don't recall why but at the time the reasoning made sense. Let me think and see if I can recall.
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There is no reason to do that as long as you don't put any personally identifying information in the report (other than the strip at the top which gets detached). It is not only OK, but possibly important to be as specific as possible about what happened, since the issue may be location-specific.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I think the being vague is to broaden the umbrella.

I was with a friend and we landed at a closed airport one time and we were told not to say "We were flying to XYZ field to get fuel" but rather we were in the area and made an unscheduled stop at a closed field.

I believe the idea is to prevent "So you took off and headed there without getting all the required information"
Click to expand...
As long as you don't put any personally identifying information in the report itself, it won't come back to you, and locations are not personally identifying.
 
When I filled out my one NASA report, I gave all the relevant details. Field, time, situation, ATC contacts, just no tail number nor names. I already had a "potential PD," so the FAA wasn't going to learn anything from that but my side of the story.

Which they learned by other means pretty quickly anyway, and resolved it favorably with no sanction for me whatsoever (and additional training required for the relevant controller).

The point of a NASA form is not getting out of sanctions. It's improving safety. Please don't lose sight of that. The only reason they are anonymous is to remove fear from the equation for getting reports.

The NASA form will not prevent sanctions. The actual prohibition is that the FAA may not use the information on the NASA form to prosecute a sanction for an unintentional act. Read it.
When violation of the 14 CFR comes to the attention of the FAA from a source other than a report filed with NASA under the ASRS, the Administrator of the FAA will take appropriate action.
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Often, such information can be gotten from a variety of other sources. For the example of landing at a closed field for fuel, the fuel pump will contain a record of being used, and probably your tail number (unless you saw ahead to lie there). Plus, there may be witnesses and radar tracks.

The consequence must be great enough for them to care. Then, the NASA form won't matter, as investigators are not, as a rule, idiots.
 
Ron Levy said:
I don't see anything there suggesting that you hide or obscure the location.
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But if it isn't specifically pertinent to situation, there isn't a need to include it. If it involved a specific enough circumstance, such as a controller performance issue, it may be warranted to include it.
 
Ron Levy said:
As long as you don't put any personally identifying information in the report itself, it won't come back to you, and locations are not personally identifying.
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Can't they "reply the tapes" and get your tail number?
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I filled one out once and I was told to be as vague as possible, I Don't recall why but at the time the reasoning made sense. Let me think and see if I can recall.
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I can't think of what it could be. There are things you want to avoid such as personal identifying information in the narrative or an indication there was an accident or something criminal (which will get the report rejected or forwarded) but otherwise...
 
MAKG1 said:
When I filled out my one NASA report, I gave all the relevant details. Field, time, situation, ATC contacts, just no tail number nor names. I already had a "potential PD," so the FAA wasn't going to learn anything from that but my side of the story.

Which they learned by other means pretty quickly anyway, and resolved it favorably with no sanction for me whatsoever (and additional training required for the relevant controller).

The point of a NASA form is not getting out of sanctions. It's improving safety. Please don't lose sight of that. The only reason they are anonymous is to remove fear from the equation for getting reports.

The NASA form will not prevent sanctions. The actual prohibition is that the FAA may not use the information on the NASA form to prosecute a sanction for an unintentional act. Read it.


Often, such information can be gotten from a variety of other sources. For the example of landing at a closed field for fuel, the fuel pump will contain a record of being used, and probably your tail number (unless you saw ahead to lie there). Plus, there may be witnesses and radar tracks.

The consequence must be great enough for them to care. Then, the NASA form won't matter, as investigators are not, as a rule, idiots.
Click to expand...

:yeahthat:
 
N9406U said:
Can't they "reply the tapes" and get your tail number?
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Not by the time they see it. They don't keep the tapes long enough for your report to be submitted, processed, and discovered by the FAA and then for the FAA to go find the tapes before they're routinely wiped.
 
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