Posturing Ignorance As Knowledge. Perhaps the prize to date for the most egregious example of reporters getting data they don't understand, and then arrogantly translating it into misleading reporting, should go to USAToday.

Last week, they got a hold of BTS data, and broke the story that it's the airlines themselves, not air traffic control, that's causing delays. Yessir, they did an "analysis" of the data, McPaper-style, and concluded that most of the causes of late flights were due to airlines themselves...

"Flight delays caused by airline glitches are now creating longer passenger slowdowns than congestion in the skies, a USA TODAY analysis shows. "

Of course, the "analysis" was accomplished by amateurs who took delay classifications as reported, and they determined, in the luxury of total industry ignorance, that unless the delay was chalked up to "congestion", it was entirely an airline-controllable delay. What they don't understand is that DOT delay classifications are not always indicative of the real causes of the delay. But, by golly, that there data done come from the guv'ment, so USAToday took it as gospel.

What USAToday doesn't know is that the classifications are essentially set-piece and not reflective of what actually goes on throughout the day. For just one example, they have no clue that the ATC delays eat up crew time, which has an impact on delays we won't attempt to explain, lest they collapse under the intellectual load.

They attributed some of the delay problem to lack of airline staffing - a supposition provided without one shred of data to support it. How many flight departures have been delayed due to staff-short passenger processing? They don't know. But they sure can tell the world that staffing is a cause. Great, reliable reporting, eh?

The piece recounted situations such as pilot shortages last summer at Northwest - caused, unbeknownst to them, largely by ATC delays eating up crew time - but blissfully decided not to review the major delays caused by repeated and major ATC failures throughout the year.

And, even the classification "congestion" is something they don't understand. It implies that airlines have too many airplanes in the sky, causing delays. The shortage of controllers, the years-late upgrade programs, and inept FAA management results in an ATC system, not the skies, that's "congested."

The USA Today piece got a wide audience, repeated as undisputed revelation in other media across the nation. Again, when all was done, consumers had a planeload of bad information about what needs to be done.

The truth is that the FAA's ATC system is living on borrowed time, and the collateral is the safety of the flying public. Half-baked "analyses" like that done by USA Today only tend to perpetuate the situation.