Research-based teamwork yielded positive results for the seven inaugural members of the Flight Safety Foundation Student Chapter at the Purdue University Department of Aviation Technology, says Scott Winter, the chapter’s first president and now assistant professor of aviation science at Florida Institute of Technology.1 Among findings of the chapter’s Foundation-assigned research project during the 2012–2013 academic year were risk factors that might help explain how runway excursions occur even when professional pilots meet the industry-accepted criteria for a stabilized approach.2
In October, Winter presented the main findings of this descriptive study during the FSF International Air Safety Summit (IASS), and he was interviewed by ASW with Lukas Rudari, the current chapter secretary, a Purdue graduate student and a summer 2013 intern at the International Civil Aviation Organization. The chapter was launched in September 2012.
“The student ch…
