The verdict has been in for a long time; stabilized approaches are an essential part of a safe landing. Airlines and business aviation operators almost universally require pilots to fly stabilized approaches, but until now there has been no way to monitor approach performance in real time other than an alert fellow pilot to warn flying pilots that they might be venturing outside the boundaries of track, glidepath, proper configuration, airspeed and sink rate. Honeywell aims to change that with its new SmartLanding, a software extension of the company’s enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS).
SmartLanding simply warns pilots via verbal announcements and messages on the EGPWS display when they are flying outside predefined standard operating procedure (SOP) criteria during approach to landing. If there is no deviation outside the SOP tolerances, then SmartLanding is silent.
