Wall Street Journal — Southwest Airlines LUV -1.34%decrease; red down pointing triangle is adding a new cockpit-alert system to help its pilots avoid dangerous situations, after carriers navigated a series of close calls at U.S. airports in recent years.
The Honeywell HON -0.26%decrease; red down pointing triangle-designed system delivers verbal warnings and text alarms if a pilot is about to use the wrong runway, for example, or take off from or land on a taxiway. The Dallas-based carrier said the system has been added to nearly all of Southwest’s approximately 800 aircraft.“It is a really powerful tool, we believe, to add more barriers to potentially bad outcomes,” Andrew Watterson, Southwest’s chief operating officer, said in an interview.
The cockpit alerts are akin to warning systems in modern cars that detect other cars in blind spots or if a driver is about to back into another vehicle. Government and aviation-industry officials have focused more on such alerts as accidents and harrowing close calls have drawn attention around U.S. airports in recent years.
Southwest aims to avoid scenarios like one that occurred on March 20. A Southwest plane began taking off from a taxiway at Orlando International Airport, instead of the intended runway running alongside it—the kind of mistake that could risk a collision with another aircraft or a crash if a taxiway is too short to enable takeoff.
An air-traffic controller intervened, helping avert potential disaster. The Honeywell alert might have alerted the pilots sooner, warning: “On taxiway! On taxiway!”
Southwest decided to add the Honeywell alerts to its all-Boeing 737 fleet around early 2024 as part of the airline’s effort to manage emerging safety risks, Watterson said. In December 2024, he said, Southwest began directing flight attendants to do pre-landing cabin cleanup earlier, around 18,000 feet instead of 10,000 feet, aiming to reduce flight-crew injuries.
In August 2024, a Federal Aviation Administration advisory panel recommended that the agency require newly produced aircraft to come with certain cockpit alerts, but it didn’t make a recommendation on requiring retrofits for existing airline fleets. An FAA spokesman said the agency is reviewing the recommendation.
Other carriers including Alaska Airlines have added the Honeywell alerts. Plane makers Airbus and Boeing have separately been working on their own runway-safety alerts for their aircraft. Certain alerts may be installed but not activated, depending on airlines’ preference.
The Honeywell alerts are designed to help pilots avoid a range of potential airport hazards. In addition to helping prevent pilots from using the wrong surface, the alerts can tell pilots if they are coming in too high or too fast for a landing.
“They happen more than we want to think that they happen,” said Thea Feyereisen, a senior aerospace engineer at Honeywell.
In 2006, a Comair regional jet tried to take off in Lexington, Ky., on a runway that was too short, leading to a crash that took 49 lives. In 2017, an Air Canada jet nearly landed on a taxiway at San Francisco’s airport, where four planes loaded with some 1,000 passengers were lined up.
The National Transportation Safety Board found in 2018 that Honeywell’s suite of alerts—known as the Runway Awareness and Advisory System—might have alerted the Air Canada pilots well before they nearly crashed into the other planes.
Southwest pilots broadly appreciate the new alerts, pilot-union leaders said, despite some initial concerns the warnings could become nuisances. They said the system has in some cases helped prompt pilots to redo landing approaches and maintain proper speeds on taxiways.
“It gets your attention,” said Capt. Jody Reven, a pilot for the carrier who is president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. “It’s not so important in Midland, Texas, but when you’re in Philly or L.A., it’s a great added tool.”
Read more on the Wall Street Jounal.
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