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The Engineer Who Stopped Airplanes From Flying Into Mountains

Posted by samzenpus on from the just-pull-up dept.

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."

10 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. And yet somehow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    a low-tier banking executive makes more money than this man.

    1. Re:And yet somehow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      doesn't sound like he's really into it for the money

      that man is lucky -- he has a very long engineering career with a meaningful benefit to society

    2. Re:And yet somehow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are larger rewards in life than money

    3. Re:And yet somehow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Only bad engineers get offshored. The good ones get kept on to die a slow, painful death by managing the offshored employees.

      FTFY.

    4. Re:And yet somehow by X.25 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      a low-tier banking executive makes more money than this man.

      Well, look at the "Forbes 400 list" of richest Americans, and see how many of 20 richest actually produce a physical product.

      And that's why system is about to collapse.

    5. Re:And yet somehow by geogob · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm an engineer working in the field of aerospace instrumentation. I'm passionate about my job. For me, it's like playing a game and I can barely wait for the weekend to end to go back to work. In my team here, we're having a lot of fun and everyday gives us new challenges. Solving these challenges is quite exhilarating, probably just as it was for this engineer fight through the challenge of solving CFITs.

      But, in the end, we're still all in it for the money. We were just lucky enough to find a career and a job that we really happened to enjoy.

      I'm totally biased when I say this, but engineers are one of the profession that's grossly underpaid and under-regarded. Some investment make millions just by moving some virtual values - usually worthless - left and right on a computer screens, while engineers responsible for the success of projects worth in the multi-billion "real dollars" range, or indirectly responsible for countless lives, struggle to get decent salaries and usually don't even come close to 6 digit figures. What's even worse is that engineers carry a true responsibility for the success of their project. A personal responsibility. Bankers, when they fail because of their own greed, carry little responsibility as far as I know. Worse that could happen, is that they lose their job when the company goes down. That's nothing compared to what engineers have to face personally when they fail like that.

    6. Re:And yet somehow by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes what would we ever do without swarms of HFT servers sucking the value out of the market within milliseconds, before humans could ever react.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  2. And the geek shall inherit the earth... by jholyhead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's nice to see real Engineers getting a bit of recognition for a change.

    Scary fact of the day from the CFIT wiki article - as of 2007, 5% of commercial airlines still weren't running a Terrain awareness and warning system.

    1. Re:And the geek shall inherit the earth... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      surely a more scary fact is that we have people flying planes who can't tell the difference between the land and the sky?

      If, like Don Bateman, you'd ever lived in the Pacific Northwest - you'd realize there are times you can't tell the land from the sky even when you're standing on the land.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
  3. Another perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Engineers are one of the highest paid professions in our society. Other than actuary you won't find a profession that pays higher with a 4 year. Starting salaries? What profession tops the list everytime? Engineering. If you want to come out of a 4 year program making the most money, it's engineering. And it's been that way for decades.

    The trouble is that everyone here is comparing their salaires to Wall Street types - who are outliers when it comes to compensation. I have met a local investment banker here in Atlanta (at Suntrust) who shakes his head about Wall Street bankers - he says they're another "World".