By Ken Schram, political commentary

Full disclosure: I’m not overly fond of being hurled through the atmosphere in an aluminum tube at speeds in excess of 500 mph.

It’s not that I’m afraid of flying, exactly. I just don’t like it much and I like take-offs least of all.

So it was that I paid particular attention to the battle between NASA and the Associated Press.

Seems that NASA went and commissioned this rather comprehensive federal aviation survey, which found that there are a whole lot more safety problems in the commercial airline industry then we’ve been told about.

Having spent more than $11 million on the research, the agency was, shall we say, reluctant to let us peons know what was in it.

For more than a year, the Associated Press has been using the Freedom of Information Act to try and pry the information loose.

NASA kept insisting that the data was “sensitive” and could, if disclosed, adversely impact public confidence in the airlines, not to mention messing with how much money air carriers make.

I’m thinking, whoa, we’re not talking about screwed up departures and arrivals here.

This isn’t about lost luggage or how many bags of peanuts makes a meal.

This is about stuff like aircraft nearly colliding in the air and on the runway.

If NASA knows something it thinks will upset me, guess what: I want to know what NASA knows.

I suddenly found myself scurrying to try and find out just when NASA became a subsidiary of the commercial airline industry.

A quick sidebar here.

I just finished reading a story about how a couple of pilots for an-as-yet-to-be-disclosed U.S. airline reportedly fell asleep in the cockpit on a flight from Baltimore to Denver a couple of years back.

Seems the two guys were knocking back some serious “z’s” while air traffic controllers were frantically trying to reach them by radio to inform them that aircraft was approaching the Denver airport at about twice the speed allowed and at the wrong altitude.

All the radio chatter finally woke the pilot up, who proceeded to wake up his also napping flight officer.

He proceeded to follow quickly issued instructions from air traffic controllers and landed the plane “without further incident.”

Commenting on the story, one airline official is quoted as saying that today’s airliners “literally do fly themselves” when the autopilot system is engaged.

I think that guy has got a job with NASA in his future.

Now, let’s go back to NASA and its study.

Following some hastily-called congressional hearings into just what the heck NASA was up to, the agency has suddenly decided it can go ahead and release the results of the study.

Now, here’s the best part.

NASA says it can release parts of the study after it spends some time “scrubbing” the data to make sure that none of the 24,000 pilots interviewed will have their identities revealed.

And the big clincher: NASA is now saying the study’s methodology or data has not been sufficiently verified and warns there is reason to question the conclusions and results.

I feel better about flying already. Don’t you?

Ken Schram is a KOMO-TV and radio commentator whose feature with John Carlson, “The Commentators,” airs weekdays on AM 570 KVI. Contact: kenschram@komo4news.com.