Fighting Runway Overruns - New Technology Could Help

Here's something that can spoil your whole day - a runway overrun. A whopping 96 percent of all runway-related accidents are attributed to runway excursions. It happens when an airplane lands too long, too far down the runway. That's because the pilot was “too hot, or too high” - too fast on approach, or above the glide path.

A major American avionics and systems manufacturer, Honeywell (Web site: www.honeywell.com), contends it has an answer to the problem. Honeywell has developed a software upgrade to its Runway Awareness and Advisory System, or RAAS.

Bob Smith is Honeywell's Vice President of Advanced Technology. He contends the RAAS upgrade “will significantly lower the probability of runway excursions.” The set-up employs the airplane's Global Positioning System (GPS), landing gear position, landing flaps position, aircraft speed, vertical speed, approach profile as well as Honeywell's runway database. It gives pilots verbal announcements if they aren't in a “stable approach.” Stable approaches, when speed, glideslope and such all align just right, are critical to safe landings.

Honeywell says it will have the RAAS upgrade available by 2009.

A Cheapflights' observation: there are a handful of key airports in this country with runways that are relatively short, where overruns are a real consideration. Among them are Chicago Midway (MDW), Reagan Washington National (DCA), and New York LaGuardia (LGA).

While some airports with shorter runways have installed crushable barriers at their thresholds to slow down safely aircraft that overrun landing strips, RAAS is designed to prevent those dangerous overruns altogether.

© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler