Jimmy Doolittle developed Instrument rating and made his first “ blind ” flight in September 1929 . The March 1931 wooden wing failure of a Transcontinental & Western Air Fokker F-10 carrying Knute Rockne , coach of the University of Notre Dame ’s football team , reinforced all-metal airframes and led to a more formal accident investigation system . On Sept. 4 , 1933 , a Douglas DC-1 test flight was conducted with one of the two engines shut down during the takeoff run , climbed to , and completed its flight , proving twin aircraft engine safety . With greater range than lights and weather immunity , radio navigation aids were first used in the 1930s , like the Australian Aeradio stations guiding transport flights , with a light beacon and a modified Lorenz beam transmitter ( the German blind-landing equipment preceding the modern instrument landing system - ILS ) . ILS was first used by a scheduled flight to make a landing in a snowstorm at Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , in 1938 , and a form of ILS was adopted by the ICAO for international use in 1949
a Transcontinental & Western Air Fokker F-10
1931 Transcontinental & Western Air Fokker F-10 crash
Aviation safety