TRENTON, N.J._Lufthansa Airlines will install a runway collision-avoidance system developed by Honeywell International Inc. on its fleet of about 250 planes, Honeywell said Friday.
Honeywell's aerospace division, based in Phoenix, said installation of the safety equipment, called the Runway Awareness and Advisory System, should begin during the second quarter of this year. The system is designed to prevent runway incursions and accidents by alerting cockpit crews about runway distances, the presence of other aircraft or other potential problems.
The system "will provide us with an extra margin of safety during ground operations," Claus Richter, vice president for operational support and deputy chief pilot for Lufthansa, said in a statement. The airline's formal name is Deutsche Lufthansa AG.
Germany's Lufthansa becomes the seventh airline to buy the system, after companies including Air France-KLM, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines and FedEx, according to Honeywell spokesman Bill Reavis. Reavis said that under its agreement with Lufthansa, Honeywell may not disclose financial terms of the contract.
The RAAS system works by using global positioning technology to compare the aircraft's location with a database of airport runways to determine the plane's exact location on the airfield. The system can alert pilots when they enter a runway and provide audio alerts in situations such as landing or takeoff on a short runway, an inadvertent attempt to take off from a taxiway or an aborted takeoff or long landing, when it can call out remaining runway distance.
Honeywell, with corporate headquarters in Morris Township, N.J., has about $26 billion in annual revenue from products in avionics, aircraft engines and other systems, engineered materials such as chemicals and fibers, automotive equipment and advanced materials. The company is one of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
___
On the Net: http://www.honeywell.com
