Elrey Jeppesen Contribution and the significance of his contribution to Aviation.

 Elrey Jeppesen is a renowned pilot whose efforts to create charts and manual s to help in flying have been instrumental in revolutionizing flying. Jeppesen was born in the year 1907 at Louisiana, growing up in Oregon, and later moving to Portland. He developed a passion for flying since his early childhood through drawing inspiration from the flying eagles. This passion brought him closer to the art at the tender age of fourteen years when a barnstormer gave him a few minutes flight at a fee.

Four years later, Jeppesen joined the Tex Rankin Flying circus and this marked the beginning of his flying career. It is at this point that the young Jeppesen became more familiar and conversant with his childhood dream which he was very ready to explore unknowingly did he know that this would be his career for the next sixty years across several departments of the air transport sector. From his savings and additional borrowings at the then working station, he was able to get just enough money to purchase a personal Jenny in which he now worked for the Fairchild Ariel Surveys where he would ferry photographers cross New Orleans and the Mississippi.

Later he would transfer to another working station at varney in the year 1930 and ended up a working at Boeing Air Transport Company. However, working at the boing was not quite fascinating for the young and energetic Jeppesen who felt that he was missing a lot working as a co-pilot and more so as a reserve labour. At this point he decided to go back to Fairchild. At this time the world was witnessing the great depression when Jeppesen quit flying mails. This short experience made the Young Jeppesen to question the safety and the efficiency of flying as he traversed through several routes.  He slowly started to think of ways to make flying easier and safer in opposition to the then’s flying approaches that incorporated the use of Rand-McNally maps that depended on the use of roads, land marks and rails too.

With this background, Jeppesen started exploring the use of his own maps and charts that involved information customized to every region across the routes used by the airplanes. He mapped the seasonally prevailing weather patterns across the routes, major land marks, hills and any natural obstructions that existed along the routes. Such maps provided him with information about the exact place that he was enroute to his destination creating more certainty and responsiveness as well. Apparently, to acquire this useful information, he consulted the farmers, surveyors and engineers, municipalities, smokestack climbing and his personal natural features observations as well. This gave him clearer picture of his route even when flying at night when he could not easily make these visual observations.

what significant contribution the individual made to aviation

The maps and charts created by Jeppesen would later earn him a reasonable stream of income in which he compiled them and sold copies that retailed at ten dollars each. They were highly demanded by individual pilots and airlines that bought them for their pilots. Throughout the 1930’s Jeppesen carried out this business which earned him more revenues to the point the business need expansion in which they moved to a house that was close at Jeppesen’s yard. Jeppesen’s business produced more charts selling every day. This attracted the attention of United comp0any which bought Jeppesen’s enterprise.

Additionally, these charts were later adopted by the US Navy to be used in the World War 2.  The creation of a new military outfit in the same period that saw the creation of the United States Air Force made the idea even more commercially applicable as this also attracted major airlines who contracted the United company to supply their pilots with the Jeppesen’s charts and manuals to increase their efficiency and safety standards.

Asa result, Jeppesen was recognized and hired as a world aerial cartographer thereby creating maps for sky routes that were used by private, commercial and military aircrafts as well. This contributed to increased confidence levels among the pilots who could now more bravely traverse dark skies and even during stormy nights too. Owing to this increased application of the navigation maps and charts created by Jeppesen, he sought a resignation permit to allow him concentrate more on producing the charts and improving on the idea as well. Therefore, in the year 1954 he resigned from the United Airlines to manage his own business until the year 1961.

 It was at this point that he sold his firm to the Mirror publishing company while still serving as the company’s chairman. This company that Jeppesen served either directly or indirectly until his death has been instrumental today in giving rise to ana evolutionary approach that has seen improvement in air safety and navigation. The company today is a world class maker of the maps and charts in electronic forms facilitating pilot training and providing navigation data.

Significance of the contribution

Elrey Jeppesen has been inducted in the OX5 Aviation Hall of Fame and has received the NBAA Meritorious Service Award along with Charles Lindbergh, Igor Sikorsky, Donald Douglas and Jimmy Doolittle. The main terminal at the Denver International Airport is named the Elrey B. Jeppesen Terminal in his honor

Elrey Jeppesen died suddenly at his home in Colorado on November 26th, 1996.