The biggest killer in the air transportation industry - controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) - is being tackled by AlliedSignal Aerospace.
The US company announced at the Show on Tuesday that American Airlines (AA) has placed an order, worth almost $25 million, for its new enhanced ground proximity warning systems (EGPWS).
AA is the first of the world's airlines to order the EGPWS - although AlliedSignal's Frank Daly, vice-president flight safety avionics, believes that most of the world's airliners will be equipped with the equipment within the next five to ten years.
Daly also says that the world's three major airframe makers - Boeing, Airbus and McDonnell Douglas - are considering installing the new equipment as standard fit.
Scarcely
"At a unit cost of $56,000 - less than the cost of a new coat of paint - they can scarcely afford not to," he says. The new Gulfstream V - to be certificated later this year - has the equipment as standard.
The majority of airliner accidents involve at least a degree of CFIT, when a perfectly serviceable aircraft - often in clouds or darkness - is inadvertently flown into the ground. Everything is operating normally, weather conditions are acceptable, there is no airframe icing, no wind shear, no collision and no loss of control."
While some of these accidents involve mountains, more often they involve aircraft crashing into relatively flat ground somewhere other than the intended landing site.
Although such accidents have declined significantly since 1974, when most nations began requiring ground proximity warning systems (GPWS) to be fitted on airliners, CFIT remains the leading causes of crashes worldwide. In December last year, an AA Boeing 757 flew into high ground near Cali, Colombia, killing all on board.
Decision
AA's chief technical pilot Brent Blackwell, speaking at the show, says that while this didn't have a major bearing on the decision to retro-fit the entire fleet with the new EGPWS kit, "... it sure concentrated our minds during the discussion process".
Each EGPWS contains a worldwide digital terrain database which, when used in conjunction with other aircraft systems providing information on location, altitude and flight path, displays surrounding terrain below, at or above the aircraft's altitude. It also sounds a warning if the aircraft's projected flight path places it too close to the ground.
Traditional GPWS track trend information from a radio altimeter, issuing an audible warning up to 30 seconds away from terrain. But they have no database and no display.
The EGPWS system gives an audible warning up to a minute from trouble, and displays terrain visually - in a coloured dot format - up to 515km (320 miles) away.
Source: Flight Daily News
