Aviation Safety Champion Dies

Jerome F. Lederer, widely acknowledged in aviation circles as the champion of a number of aviation safety measures that are in use throughout the air carrier industry, passed away on February 6, 2004 at 2:30 a.m. from congestive heart failure.

Born September 26, 1902, the year before the Wright brothers launched the world into powered flight. Lederer's flight safety career spans the entire aerospace safety spectrum and other areas of public interest as well. His aviation career spanned more than seven decades, during which he has become a veritable walking encyclopedia for aviation safety facts and figures.  He lived with the growth of aviation safety from the nation's
accident-plagued transcontinental Air Mail Service through the nation's early struggles
with space flight safety to the present.

Lederer was born, raised, and educated in New York culminating in a master's
degree in mechanical engineering from New York University in 1925. As his
first professional employment after graduation, Lederer was appointed assistant to the Director of Aeronautical Engineer and was responsible for the construction, calibrations, and operations for the wind tunnel at New York University, The following year he became an aeronautical engineer for the U. S. Air Mail Service, the world's first continuous system of scheduled air transportation, in which one of every six airline pilots died in crashes each year. Lederer's work was to design aircraft modifications to help
prevent accidents and to reconstruct crashed aircraft to determine why they had crashed.

He was a life-long personal friend of Charles Lindbergh and on the day before Lindbergh began his historic solo across the Atlantic in May 1927, Lederer had the privilege of inspecting the Spirit of St. Louis at Roosevelt Field, New York. Lederer later went on to become the first Director of the Safety Bureau of the Civil Aeronautics Board (forerunner of the National Transportation Safety Board). During his tenure, he laid the foundation
and led the development of accident investigation procedures and regulatory standards: principles followed to this day by countless government and military safety investigation groups. Following World War II, Lederer established the Flight Safety Foundation, Lederer directed the foundation for twenty years, and developed most of the programs for which it is noted, such as the worldwide exchange of prevention information, research
projects and safety seminars.

In 1956, Lederer was appointed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's seven-person Aviation Facilities Investigation Group, which paved the way for the organization of the
Federal Aviation Administration and modernized the air traffic control system. Two years later, in 1967, following the tragic space capsule fire in which three astronauts lost their lives, Lederer was invited to organize the new Office of Manned Space Flight Safety for NASA. At the time, he was 65, having already earned the unofficial title "Mr. Aviation Safety" among his peers. Neil Armstrong, the first person to step on the moon became good friends with Lederer during the Apollo program. In recalling his time with Lederer, the astronaut said, "Jerry (Lederer) was a realist. He recognized that flight without risk was flight without progress. But he spent a lifetime minimizing that risk."

In recent years, Lederer has dedicated much of his time to investigation of unique and challenging safety problems, such as substance abuse, and subtle cognitive incapacitation of pilots, cockpit boredom, and interpersonal communications.

As one might expect, Jerry has received numerous awards, over 100 by one count. In 1965, he was awarded the prestigious Wright Brother Memorial Award. In November 2002 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University conferred a Doctorate of Safety Science (Honorus Causa) on Mr. Lederer in recognition of his lifetime of dedication to aviation safety.

Lederer is listed in Who's Who in America; Who's Who in Engineering, Who's Who in Aviation, American Men of Science, and the Architects of the Age of Flight.

The International Society of Air Safety Investigators established the Jerome F. Lederer Award on October 6, 1977 for outstanding contributions to technical excellence in aircraft accident investigation. The award is given annually and the first recipient of the award was Mr. Samuel M. Phillips of the United Sates Army Agency for Aviation Safety, Fort Rucker, AL., at the Eighth Annual ISASI Seminar in Caracas, Venezuela.

Frank Del Gandio
President

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