Airlines, Workers Say Safety Plan in Jeopardy

From the Washington Post:
Airlines and pilot groups say they may be forced to curtail a critical federal safety program after a federal judge's order requiring a regional carrier to disclose pilot incident reports to families suing the airline over a fatal 2006 crash. Pilots and other workers, including flight attendants and mechanics, voluntarily file incident reports as part of a federal program to encourage disclosure in exchange for confidentiality. The workers are almost never punished for revealing their errors if they quickly report them and if their statements are the only source of information about the incident. Workers have filed tens of thousands of such reports in the past decade, which regulators and the airlines analyze to find potential hazards.
More