Southwest Airlines has added a new cockpit safety tool to most of its fleet that could prevent the types of close runway calls that have raised concerns in recent years.
The Honeywell-built “SmartLanding” and “SmartRunway” software will give verbal warnings and text alerts to pilots when they are about to use the wrong runways for taxiing, takeoff or landing. It also signals when planes are moving too fast or at the wrong altitude, according to a news release from the North Carolina-based company.
The system operates in addition to existing safety measures used by commercial aircraft.
“It is a really powerful tool, we believe, to add more barriers to potentially bad outcomes,” Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told The Wall Street Journal.
Watterson told the Journal that the airline decided to add the Honeywell alerts as part of a larger effort to address emerging safety risks.
“Safety is at the heart of everything we do at Southwest,” he said in a news release from Honeywell.
A Southwest flight nearly took off from a taxiway instead of a runway in Orlando, Fla., in March before an air traffic controller intervened.
Months earlier, a plane operated by an American Airlines regional carrier landed on the wrong runway in Chicago, but no one was harmed.
