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Southwest Airlines Adds Safety Tool to Avoid Runway Danger

The move comes as more and more close calls are reported during takeoff and landing.

Southwest Airlines has announced that it will be adding a cockpit-alert safety tool to almost all of its 800 aircraft. The Honeywell-designed “SmartRunway” and “SmartLanding” software warn pilots with audio and text alerts when a potential risk to the aircraft is detected during takeoff or landing, such as the pilot going too fast during landing, flying at the wrong altitude, or using the wrong runway. “It is a really powerful tool, we believe, to add more barriers to potentially bad outcomes,” Southwest’s chief operating officer, Andrew Watterson, told The Wall Street Journal. “Safety is at the heart of everything we do at Southwest,” he added in a Honeywell press release. According to the press release, Honeywell’s system is meant to help “break the chain of events that may lead to runway accidents” by “proactively” notifying pilots. This new safety tool comes amid a handful of crashes and close calls at airports, including a Southwest flight that almost took off from a taxiway rather than a runway at the Orlando International Airport in Florida in March. Airplane incidents “happen more than we want to think that they happen,” said Thea Feyereisen, senior aerospace engineer at Honeywell.