Aviation Safety Program

After the in-flight explosion and crash of TWA 800 in July 1996, President Bill Clinton established a Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, chaired by Vice President Al Gore. The Commission’s emphasis was to find ways to reduce the number of fatal air-related accidents. Ultimately, the Commission challenged the aviation community to lower the fatal aircraft accident rate by 80 percent in 10 years and 90 percent in 25 years.

NASA’s response to this challenge was to create in 1997 the Aviation Safety Program (AvSP) and, as seen before, partner with the FAA and the DOD to conduct research on a number of fronts.[226]

NASA’s AvSP was set up with three primary objectives: (1) eliminate accidents during targeted phases of flight, (2) increase the chances that passengers would survive an accident, and (3) beef up the foundation upon which aviation safety technologies are based. From those objec­tives, NASA established six research areas, some having to do directly with making safer skyways and others pointed at increasing aircraft safety and reliability. All produced results, as noted in the referenced technical papers. Those research areas included accident mitigation,[227] systemwide accident prevention,[228] single aircraft accident prevention,[229] weather accident prevention,[230] synthetic vision,[231] and aviation system modeling and monitoring.[232]

Of particular note is a trio of contributions that have lasting influence today. They include the introduction and incorporation of the glass cock­pit into the pilot’s work environment and a pair of programs to gather key data that can be processed into useful, safety enhancing information.