The Nation - News from March 19, 1987

A computer system designed to warn pilots of possible in-flight collisions got its first operational test on a commercial flight bound for Washington, D.C. Piedmont Airlines Flight 74, a regularly scheduled flight from Greensboro, N.C., carried the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, called TCAS. The system has been tested on a flight simulator, but this was the first flight in which the pilot was in charge of monitoring it under normal flying conditions, said Jack Leyden, chief spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington.