Flight Safety Foundation was established in 1945 to carry out research on human factors, cockpit design and the prevention and aircraft crash injuries. Shortly thereafter, the Foundation absorbed Aircraft Engineering for Safety, which had been established as a service to exchange safety information. The following six individuals played critical roles in establishing the Foundation as an independent, international and impartial nonprofit dedicated solely to the advancement of aviation safety.
Jerome F. “Jerry” Lederer, whose career in aviation safety ran from the earliest airmail flights – and a preflight inspection of Charles Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis” – to the development of the U.S. space program’s safety office, was the driving force behind the creation of Flight Safety Foundation and served as the Foundation’s first director.
Gloria Heath, a pioneering female pilot and later an expert in search-and-rescue operations on land, at sea and in the air, was a founding member of Flight Safety Foundation and an early force in the Foundation’s efforts to disseminate aviation safety information worldwide.
Richard Crane logged his first solo flight at age 13, launching an aviation career that included an apprenticeship with aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin and a research partnership with David Morrison that focused on finding ways to prevent crash injuries and ultimately led to the creation of Flight Safety Foundation.
David Morrison, an early advocate of a standardized cockpit layout and crew resource management, launched his aviation career after joining the U.S. Marine Corps in 1938 and being assigned soon afterward to the Glenn L. Martin Company (now Lockheed Martin) aircraft manufacturing plant in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Hugh DeHaven was an inventor and entrepreneur whose groundbreaking research in crash survivability led to the redesign of airplane cockpits, the introduction of seat belts in automobiles – and a role in the formation of Flight Safety Foundation
Eugene DuBois, a professor of medicine and physiology at Cornell University, was a key proponent of research on preventing aviation crashes and associated injuries and of the creation of the Aviation Crash Injury Research (AvCIR) program, one of the precursors of Flight Safety Foundation.