Don Bateman, a Canadian electrical engineer and the inventor of the ground proximity warning system, passed away on May 21. He was 91.
Bateman spent most of his career as chief engineer of flight safety avionics at Honeywell before retiring in July 2016. In 2005, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He held 40 U.S. and 80 foreign patents for aircraft terrain avoidance systems, head-up displays and speed control/autothrottle, stall warning, automatic aircraft flight control, and weight-and-balance systems.
Although he was a prolific engineer, Bateman will be forever remembered for his efforts to prevent controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accidents with the design of the ground proximity warning system (GPWS), which later became the enhanced GPWS or EGPWS. Using sensors and a highly accurate terrain database, EGPWS warns pilots of potential risks of nearby terrain and obstacles. It is credited with saving thousands of lives, and Honeywell has produced more than 65,000 EGPWS systems so far.
According to Honeywell, “Bateman’s dedication to saving lives by making aviation safer is what led him to form a team of ‘mavericks’—a group of engineers with a unique passion for what they were building, and a strong sense of purpose.”
Bateman himself had maverick characteristics. “For the most part, he was a joy to be around,” said Bill Reavis, a retired Honeywell public relations specialist. “Don was always of the opinion that we should have given EGPWS away. It was all about safety with him. He was so passionate about it.”
At his office in Seattle, Bateman and his team of engineers would study every aviation accident to try to find common root causes, Reavis recalled, “and then say, ‘let’s work on this,’ and that’s how they would continually improve the product.”
“Working on Don’s team for six years provided me a unique opportunity to learn from the master and how to create a culture for high-performing teams,” said Honeywell senior technical fellow Thea Feyereisen. “There was nothing that Don enjoyed more while working than a good argument (he took delight in diversity of thought) or a good laugh (he loved a good joke). I felt empowered as one of the team of 'mavericks.’ He was my number-one promoter, and I felt that that endorsement from my boss gave me a little superpower cape by association!”
Feyereisen worked with Bateman on other Honeywell avionics advancements, including synthetic vision that used the EGPWS database to create a 3D view of the outside world on flight deck displays. “He immediately became a champion for the new technology and called it a game changer in terms of prevention of premature descent and loss of control,” she said.
“Educate and escalate were behaviors I frequently found Don engaged in regularly,” Feyereisen explained. “When new business folks without an avionics background would rotate through business roles, Don would not hesitate to pick up the phone or walk into their office to educate. If Don thought an engineering problem wasn’t being financed at the level he thought appropriate, he wouldn’t hesitate to escalate the problem to top levels and remind them how much return on investment he was bringing to the company and that he needed them to carve out a budget for a special project.”
“He always credited the people who came before him,” said Bateman’s younger daughter, Katherine McCaslin. “He'd look back and say that aviation is built on the shoulders of so many great innovators. He really felt like his work at Honeywell was standing on the shoulders of giants to make an impact.
“My dad saw aviation as magic and raised us to love flying and travel, as well as the sense that there's always the opportunity to innovate and make something better.”
Bateman leaves behind a wife, Mary, four children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.