Sixteen Years of Safety

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This is a photo of the crash of USAir 1016, sixteen years ago today in Charlotte. The plane crashed in a microburst -- the last microburst crash in the United States.

Through the 1970's and into the mid-80's, commercial jets crashed at approximately 18-month intervals until Ted Fujita's theory that downbursts were causing these crashes was vindicated after the 1985 crash of Delta 191 in Dallas. With this one exception, we have been crash free since 1985 -- a remarkable scientific accomplishment.

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