One of the earliest uses of computer simulation to recreate an aircraft accident scenario was more than 30 years ago when Delta Air Lines Flight 191 — a Lockheed L1011 equipped with a second-generation flight data recorder (FDR) — crashed in a microburst.1 The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) used 40 different parameters from the FDR (acceleration, roll, pitch, heading, etc.), as well as audio from the cockpit voice recorder, ground radar images, weather reports and statements from pilots of other aircraft, to visually replicate the flight’s final moments.
The laser disc video, produced by legal presentation specialists Z-Axis, looks crude by comparison with today’s much more realistic animations. But it was effective. One of DOJ’s lawyers in the case, Roy Krieger, called the animations “pivotal.” The district judge ruled that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Weather Service were not negligent in the wind shear–induced accident.
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