Honeywell System May Be Standard In Boeing Birds

A runway-collision-avoidance system manufactured by Honeywell International has attracted attention from American planemaker Boeing, as well as United Airlines.

The Wall Street Journal reports both entities are looking at the Runway Awareness & Advisory System (RAAS). United is in negotiations to install the system throughout its 460-plane fleet, beginning early next year with its Boeing 777s, according to sources close to the talks. Boeing, meanwhile, is in similar discussions that would make RAAS a standard, factory-installed feature on all its new planes.

Both companies confirmed to the WSJ they're talking to Honeywell, though neither would commit to exact details. A spokeswoman for Honeywell also declined to comment.

To date, Honeywell has had limited success in offering the system, which relies on GPS signals to identify when taxiing aircraft turn on the wrong taxiway, or attempt to depart from the incorrect runway.

As ANN reported, several critics said RAAS could have prevented the August 2006 loss of a Comair regional jet, which crashed on takeoff from the wrong -- and much shorter -- runway at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, KY.

The system is currently installed on roughly 200 commercial jets, including airliners flying for Air France-KLM, Lufthansa and Alaska Airlines. RAAS is a bigger hit in the bizjet community, with about 1,400 business aircraft flying with the system.

The issue preventing wider acceptance of the technology has been cost. RAAS costs about $20,000 per plane, though that price drops with volume. The system is cheaper than several other methods being touted to combat increasingly common runway incursion incidents -- which call for new avionics systems, or elaborate ground-based awareness systems. By comparison, RAAS requires relatively simple changes to onboard computer systems, and limited pilot training.

One thing appears clear -- some kind of runway detection system is needed, regardless of the source. Boeing notes runway collisions and overruns combined led to 11 major crashes of Western-built airliners from 1997 through 2006, causing over 370 fatalities. That's over twice the number of crashes caused by mechanical failures over the same period.

FMI: www.honeywell.com, www.boeing.com, www.united.com