Aviationtoday.com: High-Flying Troubles

In 1965, a then-unknown lawyer named Ralph Nader came out with a blockbuster expose of the automobile industry’s systematic disregard for safety. Called "Unsafe at Any Speed," the book sparked a revolution in transportation regulation. Considering recent events, perhaps the air transportation industry needs its own Nader.

For air safety, it’s been a brutal year. Air France 447 in the South Atlantic; Colgan Air in Buffalo, N.Y.; Yemenia Air in the Indian Ocean; US Airways in the Hudson River; the collision of a fixed-wing plane and a helicopter, again over the Hudson. A spate of crashes in 2009 has put a grim spotlight on air safety. Each of these high-profile accidents stemmed from singular causes, but one consistent theme emerges: air safety is very much an avionics-related issue.

To address these concerns, Aviation Today produced a Webinar, "The Troubled Status of Air Safety," held Aug. 27. The hour-long event was recorded and remains available for registration on our Web site — www.aviationtoday.com/webinars.html.

The speaker panel featured William Voss, president and CEO, Flight Safety Foundation; John Goglia, independent air safety consultant and former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member; Chris Baur, president, Consulting and Technical Services, Hughes Aerospace; and Ramon Lopez, editor-in-chief, Air Safety Week.

Below are excerpts of the Webinar, as it relates to avionics:

Voss: What’s a concern now is that you can see that we’ve had a couple years that have been trending upward, in terms of the number of air accidents. This current year we’re in doesn’t look like a really great one so far.

Lopez: We’ve had 11 or 12 major crashes worldwide so far this year. I believe that, if we continue at that rate, we will exceed the number of accidents from 2008 and even 2007.

Goglia: Well, one way that we can fix it in the future is to adopt some avionics technology that we’ve had around for awhile, and that’s get rid of this voice conversation between air traffic control and the cockpit and rely instead on datalinks. I can remember early in my time at the NTSB, so I’m talking about ‘95 or ‘96, getting a demonstration of the datalink. And it was wonderful. There are no miscommunications. It’s nearly instantaneous and you can move more data. That means ATC, some of which can be automated, can get the information into the cockpit as quickly as possible. And that avionics technology is more than 10 years old.

Baur: I completely agree. This data communications technology is available today. It’s proven. It’s used every day in the cockpit, especially in overseas wide-body operations, although certainly not limited to that. It cuts down on pilot/controller workloads. It cuts down on the frequency congestion.

Persinos: The biggest killer typically has been Controlled Flight Into Terrain, or CFIT, correct?

Voss: Yeah, absolutely. This was the case for many years, but what’s interesting is that we’re seeing a shift in the type of accidents. This is an example where avionics technology did make a heck of a difference. We used to have a very significant problem with Controlled Flight Into Terrain, but since we’ve put in enhanced ground prox systems, we’ve now seen that really diminish. We’ve never had a CFIT when an enhanced ground prox system is operating properly.

Consequently, CFIT is something that we’ve actually been able to turn the corner on. It’s no longer the worst problem. Now the biggest killer is loss of control. It’s not that the pilot forgets where the ground is, but he loses control of the airplane somehow.

Goglia: Bill, let me just add that it was the fine work of the Flight Safety Foundation that helped drive that enhanced GPWS into the cockpits, and the training that has gone along with it.

Voss: Thank you very much. I didn’t want to give myself a shameless plug, but I’ll let you do it.