AIRLINES VIOLATIONS TO HIT WEB : THE ADDRESS IS HTTP://WWW.FAA.GOV/.

Byline: Matthew L. Wald The New York Times

The Federal Aviation Administration, which has always sought fines from airlines and aviation contractors that violate its rules, has started announcing the penalties, so that travelers will know about the violations.

And in two weeks, the agency will begin to offer more information over the World Wide Web, including data on accidents and other incidents.

This is a boon to consumers, said Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who first called on the FAA to open itself up after the Valujet crash in May. ``For the first time, the flying public will be able to conveniently determine if their airline has major safety problems,'' he said. ``From now on, aviation safety secrets are going public.''

The address is http://www.faa.gov/, and for those not plugged in to the World Wide Web, Wyden said that the FAA was working on a toll-free telephone number to provide the same information.

According to the FAA, the information wasn't exactly secret; it was just that anyone who wanted it would have had to file a Freedom of Information Act request.

But even with easy access, there is some dispute about the meaning of the newly available information. According to the FAA, travelers shouldn't worry about getting on an airplane, and easier access to the data won't help them make judgments about airlines. A study produced for the agency by a consulting company concluded that accidents are too few and far between to establish any trends.

But the public release of information may serve another purpose: embarrassment. The adverse publicity could mean more to an airline than a fine of $50,000 or $100,000, according to aviation experts.

And many people may be curious about equipment failures, unscheduled landings and other incidents that stop short of accidents.

The change is part of a slow shift by an agency on the defensive. By law, the FAA became a purely regulatory agency late last year; before that it was supposed to regulate and also promote aviation. That, too, was a defensive move, brought on by the Valujet DC-9 crash in the Everglades. Soon after, Federico Pena, then secretary of transportation, went to the scene and declared that he had flown on Valujet and that it was safe, but after the FAA grounded the carrier a few weeks later, he proposed ending the FAA's promotion mission.

Whether this brings the agency firmly into the consumers' camp is unclear. The FAA does, in fact, have a ranking method, which determines which airlines should get more regulatory scrutiny. But it has said explicitly that it would not share this with the public. The reason, one spokesman said, is that the ranking may be based on a hunch, an informant with confidential information or other factors that are not statistically measurable. But it is also clear that the airlines, which hardly ever talk publicly about safety, would object strenuously.

At the Air Transport Association, which is the trade association of the big carriers, spokesman David Fuscus said that releasing information could actually be a safety threat, making the airlines compete on safety, and thereby discouraging them from volunteering information to the FAA.

Barry Bermingham, deputy administrator for system safety at the FAA, said information that had been submitted by the airlines voluntarily would be held in close confidence. ``We don't shoot the messenger,'' he said. ``If we can receive information that's of value to the FAA in improving a safety system, that was voluntarily submitted, we're going to protect that data from public disclosure,'' he said.

He also said that security violations would not be described in detail, to avoid giving a road map to terrorists and others.

Various data bases on aviation safety have already been put on the Web by other parties, although some of it is from the FAA. For example, the names and address of nearly 600,000 licensed pilots are available at http://www.avweb.com/. Information on aircraft is available through http://www.landings.com/landings/pages/search.html. The National Transportation Safety Board makes some accident information available at http://www.ntsb.gov. The British equivalent of the Safety Board, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, gives information at http://www.open.gov.uk/aaib/aaibhome.htm.

Another part of the Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, reports on on-time performance at http://www.bts.gov/oai.