The Advantage of Flightpath-Oriented Situation Displays During Microburst Encounters

No adequate method presently exists for commercial flight crews to reliably predict or detect the presence of microburst activity prior to encountering the disturbance itself. While most shears do not exceed the performance capabilities of the aircraft, because of inadequate instrumentation they may exceed the performance capabilities of the crew. An integrated instrument display would enable a pilot to rapidly detect the onset of a shear and provide optimum guidance to fly the airplane to the very limit of its performance envelope thereafter. Such a display must provide information concerning either airspeed or angle of attack as well as altitude above terrain. We believe the availability of such an optimum flightpath display would have prevented many of the catastrophic microburst-induced windshear accidents. Until such information is provided, windshear accidents will continue to occur.