Airplane collision avoidance to upgrade safety

[TexasStooge]

By DAN RONAN / WFAA ABC 8

A small computer that saves lives by preventing planes from running into mountains and other terrain and is installed in every commercial airplane is now being upgraded to improve the safety on the ground as well.

The upgrade is designed to give pilots enough time to take immediate evasive action if a crash is imminent.

In a test of its abilities, a caution terrain warning was heard by a pilot demonstrating the new technology as he flew a business King Air towards a 12,000 foot mountain south of Albuquerque.

As the pilot flew closer to a mountain, the warnings intensified with verbal cautions of "terrain" and "pull up."

The pilot took the plane within seconds of crashing to show how the computer, an extensive data base and virtual reality sensors, work.

"We have a very accurate position and flight path information about where plane is in 3-dimensionial space," said Marcus Johnson, Honeywell Aerospace chief pilot.

Deadly accidents into terrain, called controlled flight, are now far less common than they were even just 10 years ago.

In 1995, an American Airlines crew flew a plane into a mountain in Colombia. Months later, an Air Force jet crashed in Croatia killing US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.

"Had this system been on board they would have had 30 to 40 to 50 seconds of warning and alerting," Johnson said.

There have been collision avoidance systems on airplanes for many years, but with the new technology pilots will be given much more time to take evasive action.

More than 100 miles out, pilots could see on a cockpit computer screen where danger might be lurking and adjust their heading or altitude, which is important on days when the weather and visibility are poor and the chances of an accident increase.

The new system also provides pilots and passengers additional safety on the ground.

For several years the government has been at war against runway and taxiway accidents. The enhanced computer software should significantly lower the likelihood a plane will take off or land on the wrong runway making complicated airports like Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport easier for pilots to navigate safely.

"It will help prevent people from landing on taxiways [and] landing on the wrong runway on top of other airplanes that are holding on a runway," said Joe Poe, Honeywell Aerospace. "It can have a positive effect reducing those kinds of accidents."

Honeywell said since the system was developed more than 10 years ago, more than 40 documented collisions have been prevented. Now that the program has been upgraded, flying should be even that much safer.