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The Engineer Who Stopped Airplanes From Flying Into Mountains
New submitter gmrobbins writes "The Seattle Times profiles avionics engineer Don Bateman, whose Honeywell lab in Redmond, Washington has for decades pioneered ground proximity warning systems. Bateman's innovations have nearly eliminated controlled flight into terrain by commercial aircraft, the most common cause of fatal airplane accidents."
Correction: cfit is no longer the leading cause. Terrain warning systems make then almost impossible, which is the point of this article.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
That 5% includes Africa and Asia, most of which isn't covered by aviation authorities with the same power as the EASA or FAA - places like Singapore etc are, but you need to start including all the smaller airlines that own Boeing 737-200s or 727s, which have been around for over 4 decades and are available very cheaply. They won't fly to Europe or the US, so they get to operate under very relaxed rules - check out the list of airlines banned from flying to EU airports sometime, it's quite enlightening.
Also, corruption is rife in many African countries, which even by itself is a big blocker to reform.