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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."
I think you mean "Aeroplanes".
a low-tier banking executive makes more money than this man.
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.
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
Today this would be solved by making flying info mountains illegal.
This summary must be incorrect somehow.
I just opened Flight Simulator and had no trouble controlling my flight right into the side of a mountain. Clearly, the system needs work.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
My family has had a ranch in the mountains for about 100 years within line of sight of a military airport in more recent years.
The B17 and other wreckage there was horrible, uncommon and yet eventual.
You won't see those pictures on the Internet.
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
The government will, as soon as they figure out how to get the mountains into Gitmo.
"The Engineer Who Stopped Airplanes From Flying Into Mountains"
I thought that was the pilot's job?
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Don't Think
That should be "Don't Sink!"
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
When you retards stop complaining about the system and start campaigning for Ron Paul to get it fixed.
Help us O. B. Gyn Kenobie; you're our only hope.
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".
Different does not necessarily mean better.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Air New Zealand DC10 was equipped with a terrain warning system, on the black box voice recorder you could hear the "woop woop pull up a few seconds before it hit Mt Erebus. So I duess it depends on how steep the mountain is.
The reason the plane flew straight into the mountain was the navigation system had been programmed wrong. An the visibilty was compromised by the cluds and reflections from the snow and ice.
One of the main problems is decision making is hard when your mental model of what is happening differs from what instruments and other sensors are telling you. Not trusting your mental model (often developed from years of training and experience) does not come easy; add in a situation where even a slight delay has serious impact and you can see why stuff still happens.,/P>
As someone much older, wiser, and experienced once told me if you get into a situation where your not sure what is going on, return to the last safe setup and sort things out; as he put it "Remember - you can always back the ship down because you know the water behind you is deep enough to avoid running aground."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Sir,
Our economy is increasingly winner-take-all.
Entertainment: mass media raises a few stars as superstars, most of the profession starves. Once upon a time, local entertainment could provide a living. Now all those local entertainers have to compete with superstars on TV. They can't.
Big company management: with fewer, bigger, companies, very few people ever get a chance to be a CEO-type. A few winner superstars, and then everyone else.
Sports: same story as entertainment.
Bankers: apparently concentrated in Wall Street!
What used to be distributed markets supporting many are now global markets supporting a few superstars, opportunity for most has dried up.
This is big shift in our economy and society, and I don't think we've really adapted well. Unless we want a society of 99% losers and 1% superstars, we're going to have to do SOMETHING. We could do something about it ourselves: just shun mass entertainment and the superstars and support the locals instead. Don't buy in big-box stores. Try not to buy stuff from SuperCorps. But all that may not be enough, and we'll have a bald choice between Government income-levelling or serfdom for most.
-PeterM
Yes, it it "free trade". "Free", doesn't means free for everyone, or equal for everyone. "Free trade" just means "no rules trade" or "self-regulating trade".
Oh boy, are you ever wrong. At the time of the free trade talks, I obtained a copy of the agreement. It is a fairly hefty book.
"Free Trade" is a marketing slogan to sell a trade agreement to liberty loving people. In reality, it is a set of rules that groups try to influence to their advantage.
Your post only points out how effective that marketing has been.
we need an engineer who will stop ships from sailing into islands.
Sorry, it was developed by Sundstrand Data Control back in the 80s, when I was working there. Later bought by AlliedSignal, then merged with Honeywell. Honeywell had basically zero to do with the development of GPD systems.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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