With runway safety incidents on the rise, Honeywell Aerospace is preparing to introduce Surf-A, a runway surface alert system that will provide a “third set of eyes” for pilots. Honeywell last week demonstrated the Surf-A system in a series of flights between Seattle and Yakima, Washington, using its Boeing 757 testbed. If all goes according to plan, Surf-A could be FAA certified and available for retrofit in the next 12 to 18 months.

Surf-A directly alerts pilots onboard the aircraft to the risk of runway incursions, excursions, or other wrong-surface events. The software uses GPS and ADS-B data in the runway engagement zone to monitor traffic and provides an aural alert to the pilot when its algorithms determine that the airplane is on a trajectory that could result in a collision in the next 30 seconds.

Pilots using the Surf-A software can hear four different alerts: “traffic on final,” “traffic behind,” “traffic on runway,” and “traffic intersecting runway.” In addition to the aural alerts, text messages also appear on the pilot’s navigation display.

“The pilot is the ultimate decision-maker on what to do with this information,” Thea Feyereisen, a senior technical fellow at Honeywell Aerospace who is helping to develop the Surf-A system, told reporters during a briefing at Boeing Field in Seattle last week. “Just as if your copilot had said, ‘Hey, there's someone on the runway,’ this is a third pair of eyes for the pilot.”

Surf-A builds upon Honeywell’s already-certified runway awareness and advisory system and SmartRunway/SmartLanding software, which use the aircraft’s GPS location combined with geographical data to provide onboard alerts when a pilot is at risk of a runway overrun or wrong-surface landing. SmartRunway and SmartLanding can also alert pilots when takeoff flaps are not set, an approach is unstable, or if a runway is too short, for example.

The next evolution of this Honeywell technology is Surf-IA (Situational Awareness on the Airport Surface with Indications and Alerts), which adds more sophisticated visual indicators to the flight displays. Honeywell has been testing this since 2018 in collaboration with Airbus and Dassault.

Whereas Surf-IA is intended for forward fit on new aircraft, the more basic Surf-A system will be available as a retrofit that is affordable and simple to install, Feyereisen explained. “It's our desire to get this not just as a forward-fit option but retrofit, and to get this capability to all levels of capable aircraft.”