Avoiding airplane collisions at airports can lead to warnings

Ride the Honeywell Test Plane – Aerospace Giants Honeywell Developers are building new cockpit alerts that say they will give airline pilots more valuable time to deal with the dangers of the airport.

Honeywell’s senior test pilot captain Kirkvinin tested an alert late last month called the Surface Alert or Surf-A by replicating some of the most severe disasters at airports in recent aviation history.

The moment we landed at Topeka Regional Airport, the Gulfstream G550 business jet stopped at Kansas Airport on the same runway where Vinning was about to land.

“Runway Traffic!” Called an automatic alert in the cockpit of Honeywell’s test plane: The 43-year-old Boeing 757 got Vinning lifted, canceled landing and flew safely through the airport.

Many serious close calls in recent years have raised concerns about how to better avoid them at increasingly crowded airports. The National Transportation Safety Board and other safety experts are urging more advanced cockpit alerts like Honeywell is testing.

Runway intrusions averaged 4.5 last year when planes, people, or vehicles should not be on the runway. The Federal Aviation Administration classifies them by severity: the top two are “serious incidents in which conflicts are narrow and averted,” followed by a reduction in separation and potentially lead to temporally critical correction/avoidance responses to avoid conflicts when there is a potentially significant conflict.”

Serious runway invasions at US airports peaked at age 22 in 2023, the most common in at least a decade. The FAA is looking to achieve its goal of zero-close calls by adding new lighting and other safety technologies to airports around the country.

“He’s very good at being a bad pilot,” said Thea Fayeliersen, a well-known technology fellow at Honeywell Aerospace Technology, about Vining. Her unit is developing a new cockpit feature for aviators, and she said she hopes the new suite will earn regulator certification next year.

“The better it counts for a few seconds while operating near the runway, and lets the pilot know of a potentially serious situation,” Feyerien said.

The Honeywell test plane was not configured like a regular passenger jet, and no customers were on board. There were spacious seats facing the front of the plane, but at the rear, Honeywell’s flight engineers were placed on the console to monitor flight data and alerts in real time. That day, Honeywell demonstrated the technology on flights on board with officials from the Department of Transport, FAA and NTSB, a company spokesperson told CNBC.

Vining has performed another incident simulation since 2023. American Airlines 777 London boundary crossed the runway Delta Air Lines The 737 had taken off rather than just the runway, as directed by the air traffic controller. Delta pilots in that situation abandoned takeoff and both planes landed safely at their destination.

Honeywell said the Surf-A alert could have given the pilot 10 seconds of reaction time, due to the possibility of a collision notification. What the new program Honeywell is testing is using ADS-B data, the GPS of the plane, or ADS-B data.

“It’s usually a very good work environment between pilots, air traffic control and airport management,” Vining said. “We do it safely, efficiently and smoothly, but we also see that with just a small break, a small variation, things can be wrong very quickly.”

The Aerospace giant has already provided another alert to the pilot telling them if they are about to make a mistake, such as landing or taking off on the taxiway instead of the runway. For example, on-screen visual alerts and oral warnings – “Attention! Taxorade!” The so-called Smart X package warns pilots if the flaps are not set up correctly, if the runway is too short, or if it’s too high or too fast, in other situations.

“When aircraft approach an airport where there are other planes flying low on the ground, collisions are the most dangerous place,” said Jeff Gutzetti, a retired aviation safety investigator with the NTSB and FAA.

These alerts are on Alaska Airlines For years and recently Southwest Airlines I’ve added them. Honeywell said the alert is currently flying on more than 3,000 planes run by 20 airlines, but hundreds of airlines are still only used around the world.

“Since we’ve implemented the software, we can’t think of an instance with runway intrusions,” said Dave Hunt, 737 pilot, Vice President of Safety and Security at Southwest.

American Airlines According to lesson plans seen by CNBC, they were training pilots with these alerts in the second quarter of the year. Last month, the Americans received the first aircraft with runway recognition and other alerts, adding that Boeing 737 pilots are trained in the tools.

While alerts are not required by regulators, the FAA said it would “consider recommendations” from the “runway” safety rate to determine the next step, referring to groups of aerospace, aerospace, pilot associations, government and industry personnel.

“The alerts occur far from the runway and make sure that if there is an aircraft on the runway, it doesn’t have to make that decision very low to the ground,” said Johnsite, director of flight operations safety at Alaska Airlines.

The US is the busiest aviation market in the world, with 44,000 flights with 3 million travelers a day. Serious aviation accidents are rare, and fatal crashes are still rare.

However, when nearly 16 years of fatality-free winning streak broke on January 29, an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed into an American Airlines regional jet at the moment it landed at Washington, Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people on two planes, raising concerns about the magazine’s airspace.

The aviation industry relies on the so-called Swiss cheese safety model. There, each slice provides protection, but has holes that are ideally covered when safety measures are stacked on top of each other.

“Aviation is built on a layer of safety over the layer,” the Alaska Airlines website said.

Last month, Honeywell’s demonstration flight from Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport in Kansas City, Missouri recreated an actual incident in Austin, Texas on a foggy morning in February 2023. Fedex The Boeing 767 plane stopped landing in seconds before landing on the same runway as the air traffic controller cleared. Southwest 737 Take off.

FedEx pilots looked at the outline of the plane southwest through the fog, pulled it up and landed safely afterwards. Both flights continued safely to their destination, but federal safety investigators said the two aircraft were just 150 feet closer than the length of the FedEx 767.

According to a report by the NTSB, Honeywell technology could be offered to FedEx pilots with 28-second advanced notifications of traffic on the runway in the 2023 Austin incident.

Feyereisen said the new technology will be modified on older aircraft and available on new jets.

“In general, software is tens of thousands of dollars (per plane), but not hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Feyereizen said. “So if (a) you’re looking at a $150 million aircraft, your passenger costs less than a penny.”

This year, Southwest has added software to its fleet of approximately 800 Boeing 737s. Hunt said it would cost between $20 million and $30 million to equip the plane.

“It’s cheaper than an accident,” he said.

According to the NTSB, the Southwest Challenger 350 business jets crossed the runway between aircraft under 200 feet and then stopped their arrival after a Southwest plane arrived to land at Chicago Midway International Airport before landing safely between aircraft.

Such close calls are “very rare, but obviously they are concerning and we’re trying to mitigate as much as possible,” Hunt said. Honeywell software is “very effective at ensuring that pilots are aware of where they are in the airport” and “does really good work to prevent inadvertent runway intrusions during taxiing,” he added.

When developing warnings, Feyereisen said the key is not to overwhelm information known as “nuisance alerts” with too much information.

“If you blow alerts through cockpit speakers at low altitudes at critical stages of flight, such as a landing or takeoff approach that requires a full focus on the pilot’s attention… you create too many distractions,” said Hunt of Southwest.

There are also limitations on existing alerts and new programs that Honeywell is testing. To avoid airborne collisions, commercial aircraft need traffic alerts and collision avoidance systems, or what is called TCAs. This will show surrounding traffic on the cockpit display. However, the system is generally used at altitudes of at least 1,000 feet.

It would not necessarily have helped pilots of American Airlines planes under 400 feet in a fatal collision with a Black Hawk helicopter in January in Washington, DC.

“We are looking for alternatives to close the gap that can integrate TCA and ADS-B type information together,” Feyereisen says.

The Alaska safety director, Site said the DC crash was “a huge, unexpected event in the industry, but the performance over the past 50 years shows that it is a very rare event.”

“That’s why as an industry we are trying to find even better technology, aim to strengthen the technology we are today, preventing this from happening and reducing the possibilities to the lowest possible level,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be zero in the aviation system, but I’m trying to get as close as possible to the probability of zero.”

– CNBC’s Erin Black contributed to this report.