Stapleton International Airport on Friday began hooking up a newly improved radar system to detect wind shear, which has been blamed for plane crashes that have killed more than 650 people since 1972.
John McCarthy, director of research application programs at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, said a similar device will be tested this year at Orlando International Airport, before Raytheon Corp. delivers it for nationwide use.The device, called a terminal doppler weather radar, is scheduled for installation at 47 airports nationwide beginning in 1992.
Similar devices have been tested at Stapleton in Denver in the summers of 1988 and 1989, and already are credited with preventing jetliner crashes from microbursts, small storms with wind that can exceed hurricane force.
Fran Oster of the Federal Aviation Administration planning department at Stapleton said the radar being put into operation Friday is the 1988 version with some modifications. A different design tested last year didn't work as well, Oster said.
The FAA says wind shear is responsible for the majority of casualties in airline accidents, and gave a high priority to the research project.
Research began after wind shear was blamed for the crash of Eastern Flight 66 at New York's Kennedy International Airport in 1975. More than 100 people were killed.
More recently, wind shear was blamed for the crashes of Pan Am Flight 759 shortly after takeoff from New Orleans in 1987 and Delta Flight 191 at Dallas-Fort Worth in 1985.