Talk:Terrain awareness and warning system

Seemingly incorrect factual statement
The article states that "Statistics show that no aircraft fitted with a terrain awareness and warning system has ever suffered a CFIT accident." But what about American Airlines Flight 965? [] This aircraft had a terrain awareness system fitted and yet crashed into a mountain near Buga in Columbia, so this statement would appear to be incorrect. --Antarctic-adventurer (talk) 11:46, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Now also Polish Tu-154M crashed near Smolensk due to CFIT (most likely), even though it was equipped with TAWS. (guest) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.222.121.2 (talk) 09:29, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out; text has been corrected. The TAWS term is sometimes used to refer to EGPWS rather than older GPWS systems, which is a confusing usage. PolarYukon (talk) 15:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, as far as I know the TAWS term designates the system, while the EGPWS term refers to a product by Honeywell that implements the TAWS system. The FAA uses the term TAWS and not EGPWS in TSO-C151b. --Laomai Weng (talk) 14:42, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The Flightglobal article says "Figures prove that no TAWS-fitted aircraft has suffered a CFIT accident." which is different from what we say in the article. And given that we describe two TAWS CFIT accidents in the article (and there was a King Air crash near Bozeman in 2007 which we don't mention), this source is clearly wrong. I'm going to just remove it. --sciencewatcher (talk) 13:33, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

TAWS failures to perform - record of effectiveness
I would like to suggest returning some mention of the only two major recorded (that I could find) examples of TAWS failing to perform, both of which occurred in Poland. A section on this was included on this page, removed by MilborneOne, added back by myself, and once again removed by MilborneOne.

I agree that the wording of the previous section may not have been the best, but MilborneOne's comment that "accidents have no relevance to the system" seems illogical to me. TAWS has a purpose, and if it fails in that purpose, this describes its actual operating capabilities. But more importantly, the fact that so few accidents has occurred is very valuable, just as is info. on how to avoid such failures. A reader who turns to this one, single page in Wikipedia about a major safety system used on commercial airliners might want to know about its actual effectiveness.

More to the point, info. on the failure of TAWS in the two cases is hard to find in English. And the causes of these two accidents are astounding. In short, repeated false alarms (an area worth developing on this page) led Polish military pilots (both cases involved military flight crews) to develop a habit of ignoring TAWS warnings. In one case, the volume on the system was turned off; in the second, TAWS warnings are heard on the data recorder, though the crew does not react to them.

I strongly suggest returning a section NOT on accidents, but on failures of TAWS to perform according to its intended purpose. I would be willing to draft such a section. Tanessi (talk) 06:36, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * My objection still stands that these accidents have no relevance to the system, as you have said in the Polish 101 accident it was the crew that ignored the system, no evidence that the system failed to perform. MilborneOne (talk) 11:35, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * If these accidents are significant then perhaps they should have their own stand-alone articles. - Ahunt (talk) 12:19, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The two Polish accidents have their own article. The Bozeman one doesn't appear to. I'd suggest rewriting the section but trimming it down. If a significant accident mentions TAWS it is probably relevant to this article. --sciencewatcher (talk) 14:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Just mentioning TAWS doesnt infer any notability or relevance to this article, it is a standard bit of equipment. Do you have any reliable sources that state that a TAWS system was a cause of an accident? MilborneOne (talk) 16:52, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Who said anything about the TAWS causing the accident? The fact that a piece of equipment that is meant to make CFITs impossible didn't prevent a CFIT makes it notable, whether it was pilot error or not. TAWS appears throughout the accident report. --sciencewatcher (talk) 17:54, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Examples of CFIT where the EGPWS/TAWS has been ignored exist but it more to do with the pilot training and not the system, have a read of the accident report for Mount Salak Sukhoi Superjet 100 crash were they turned the system off, the Polish example is the same the crew just ignored it. To list accidents not the fault of the system could be considered a bit bias. The Controlled flight into terrain article details these accident and discusses the use (and abuse) of the EGWPS/TAWS. MilborneOne (talk) 22:56, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

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