Warning system has drastically reduced crashes

Question: What is a Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) accident?

Answer: When an airplane crashes into the ground with no mechanical problems or failures and weather is not a factor, investigators call it a Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) accident. Once it was the leading cause of fatal accidents; now it rarely occurs.

In the 1970s and ’80s, airplanes were hitting the ground at an alarming rate because of pilots not realizing where they were. In 1970, a flight carrying the Marshall University football team struck a hill while trying to land in Huntington, W.Va. Eastern Airlines Flight 401 descended into the Everglades on Dec. 29, 1972. TWA Flight 514 flew into a mountain Dec. 1, 1974, as it approached Washington Dulles. Eastern suffered another disaster in La Paz, Bolivia, on Jan. 1, 1985, when a 727 flew into Mount Illimani.

An engineer and inventor named Don Bateman reasoned if accurate location information was compared with 3-D maps, then a computer could determine if ground impact was likely. Bateman built a prototype of this warning system and testing began.

During the night of Dec. 20, 1995, American Airlines Flight 965 approached Cali, Colombia. Although the plane’s Ground Proximity Warning Systems (GPWS) did provide a warning, it was too late. The airplane slammed into a mountainside.

Following the accident, airlines began to equip airliners with the improved GPWS known as Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning (EGPWS). In 2000, all airliners were required to install EGPWS, now called Terrain Awareness Warning System (TAWS). This technology dramatically reduced one of the most common accidents.

John Cox is a retired airline captain with US Airways.