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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."
Now all we need is to make the technology down-scale in both size/weight and cost. It would be great to see these systems adapted and installed in smaller, lighter aircraft. There are still far too many CFIT fatalities in the private and small aircraft world. They have synthetic terrain warning (superimposing the aircraft's position from GPS and altimeter over a topographic data to determine horizontal and vertical proximity to terrain) but no active warning systems. GPS is good, so is the altimeter, but neither are perfect all the time - if they were, ground proximity warning systems (GPWS...aka "WHOOP WHOOP, PULL UP!!") still are prohibitive for small aircraft operators. Kudos to the GPWS team though - they saved my ass on at least one occasion in a previous life when I was professional pilot!
"He deliberately force-landed the plane by diving down in a steep manner until the Ground Proximity Warning System gave off a signal 'sink rate, whoop, whoop, pull up'."
He said Komar ignored 15 GPWS warnings as well as his co-pilot's warning and brought the plane into the sharp dive, causing it to drop suddenly by 1,600 feet per minute compared with a normal 1,000 feet per minute and to overshoot the runway.
The plane's front wheel snapped off, causing the aircraft to bounce three times before skidding on the runway, crossing an airport fence and a public road and hitting a dyke before bursting into flames, the prosecutor said.
Source.
A few years ago, a friend claimed that a member of the flight crew aboard GA-200 actually said "Stupid American" or something along those lines in an attempt to shut up the GPWS (which wouldn't particularly surprise me knowing Garuda). I'd dearly love to hear the CVR recordings for that flight if anyone knows where I can get them, I'd like to see whether that rumour is fact or fiction.
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
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.
I think you're comparing averages to outliers.
An analogous comparison would be to look at drama majors and assume they all make crazy money because A-list Hollywood actors are millionaires. There are large numbers of people who study finance and business -- and are good at it -- but who don't have the particular breed of genius mixed with insanity required to succeed in Wall Street, which is the pinnacle of that career field.
In my field, software, there are plenty of millionaire engineers, and a few billionaires. They made their money as much by luck, being in the right place at the right time with the right ideas, as by skill and hard work, but that's also true of the Wall Street types. Oh, and the software "outliers" have orders of magnitude more money than the Wall Street types.
Further, those millionaire investment bankers don't make money by just taking a nice, safe and predictable salary... their compensation is almost entirely performance-based, and the nature of their business is that performing well requires taking risks. If those risks don't pan out, they get very little and lose their jobs. Lots of people go that route and wash out, but we don't hear about them. The analogous sort in the software field is the guys who spend their careers in Silicon Valley, hopping from startup to startup, working insane hours for peanuts plus worthless stock, hoping that this time the stock becomes valuable. I don't know what the analogous risk-taking, shoot-for-the-moon career path looks like in, say, aviation engineering, but working for Boeing isn't it.
I think there are plenty of opportunities for engineers to make huge money by taking big risks. There are also plenty of opportunities for engineers to make a decent living working 40-50 hours per week, doing what they like, with a paycheck that shows up like clockwork. It's also important to keep in mind that the lower stress of the steady paycheck is also a form of compensation, and not a trivial one. It's huge if you want to have a family and to be involved in your kids' lives, for example.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I recently met an engineer who developed the architecture and led the design of several widely deployed electronic systems. I don't want to mention the names (so as not to embarrass anyone) but they're systems that generate a quarter billion dollars in revenue annually and which you've almost certainly heard of.
*He* can't get a job, because of his age and (ironically) because his resume is so impressive. People are afraid to hire him.
Now to be fair this guy pretty much radiates "engineer". He comes across as gruff, cynical and impatient, and he dresses a little oddly. He might have some tendency towards Asperger's; he listens intently to what is said but doesn't seem to be aware of body language. But still, even considering that, this shows that the fond belief engineers have that a track record of success will magically open doors for them in their career is baloney. This guy built more than one "better mousetrap", and he can't even get a job interview.
The reason this guy hasn't been able to get a job for several years is that he doesn't want to network. He sees shmoozing as a stupid waste of time, because it's not how *he* would hire someone to do a job. But at his career stage it's the *only* way he'll get another job, because otherwise his resume will only land on the desk of people who see his ability and experience as a threat. He's got to hit the cocktail party circuit -- events where tech entrepreneurs hang out -- because *that's* where he'll find people eager to bring someone like him on board.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.