Writer

Amy Wilder

Honeywell brought its Boeing 757 testbed to Kansas City in late August to demonstrate its&nbsp;ground safety cockpit tech. Included in this demo were its newest&nbsp;runway safety addition—Surface Alerts (SURF-A)—along with its already-certified SmartRunway/SmartLanding (“Smart X”), which helps pilots avoid&nbsp;wrong-surface events and runway excursions. Both create direct cockpit alerts hosted on the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS).
While Smart X has been available for roughly a decade, Honeywell expects SURF-A certification on commercial transport aircraft in 2026, pending approvals and ongoing successful flight t<a href="https://aerospace.honeywell.com/us/en/about-us/blogs/honeywell-successfully-tests-surf-a-on-757-aircraft">ests and demos on the 757</a>. SURF-A is an EGPWS-hosted software upgrade, designed to be retrofitted across a broad installed base.
During a pre-flight media briefing, Thea Feyereisen, senior technical fellow at Honeywell Aerospace Technologies, outlined three risk areas these technologies are built to address: wrong-surface operations, runway excursions, and incursions.&nbsp;
Smart X provides aural and visual cues such as “on taxiway,” “flaps, flaps,” “too high,” “unstable,” and “long landing” to alert pilots in real time to high-energy approaches, configuration errors, and wrong-surface alignments when pilot attention is outside the cockpit during high workload phases of flight.&nbsp;
SURF-A extends that protection to runway incursions by using ADS-B data and trajectory analysis to warn pilots when another aircraft or vehicle in the runway engagement zone creates a collision risk within roughly 30 seconds. Pilots can hear four distinct callouts: “traffic on runway,” “traffic on final,” “traffic intersecting runway,” and “traffic behind,” with supporting text on the display.&nbsp;
“NTSB has recommended direct alerts for the pilots,” Feyereisen said, emphasizing the potential time savings of bypassing controller-to-pilot radio latency in time-critical situations. Cockpit alerts can also step in to save the day when busy airspace radio traffic might mean radio calls get lost or stepped on.&nbsp;
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During the demo flight, Honeywell recreated two high-profile close calls widely discussed in industry safety forums to show how cockpit alerting technology could give pilots more time to respond in critical moments. In <a href="https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20240606.aspx">February 2023</a> at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, a landing FedEx 767 and a departing Southwest 737 came within seconds of collision. The testbed aircraft approached a runway surface with a Gulfstream already on the active surface; as it neared the runway, a visual and aural alert showed “traffic on runway,” and the pilots initiated a go-around. The February 2023 incident was noteworthy in that the field was obscured by fog, and controllers could not see that the 737 had taxied onto the active runway.
A second scenario mirrored a <a href="https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20240604a.aspx">January 2023 New York JFK</a> event in which an American Airlines 777 taxied onto an active runway as a Delta 737 was taking off. During this demonstration, Honeywell’s 757 began its takeoff roll on the runway, and the cooperating Gulfstream aircraft taxied across the runway in front of it. An alert in the cockpit advised pilots of the traffic intersecting the runway; the pilots had ample time to react while it was still difficult to see the crossing airplane in the distance.&nbsp;
Flight engineers on board the 757 coordinated each demonstration with the pilots of both aircraft. The pilots coordinated with air traffic control to ensure safety during the demonstration.&nbsp;
Honeywell also showcased Smart X’s excursion-mitigation function in which pilots approached the runway with a deliberately “unstable” approach: missing flaps configuration (“flaps, flaps”), approaching above the glidepath (“too high”), failing to stabilize (“unstable”), then floating beyond the aim point (“long landing”), with distance-remaining callouts. Honeywell’s pilots then demonstrated a simulated taxiway-takeoff lineup, prompting an “on taxiway” alert around 40 knots groundspeed, underscoring the value of an aural prompt before brake energy or runway length becomes limiting.
On June 16, Honeywell announced that Southwest Airlines is “in the process of activating its entire Boeing 737 aircraft fleet” with SmartRunway/SmartLanding via the EGPWS already on the aircraft, with “more than 700 aircraft…activated to date.”&nbsp;
Feyereisen framed SURF-A as a “<a href="https://aerospace.honeywell.com/us/en/about-us/blogs/surf-a">third set of eyes</a>” complementing existing tower-based systems: groundside tools can alert controllers, she said, but they do not always warn pilots directly, and simultaneous radio transmissions can mask urgent calls. “Pilots are the last line of defense,” she said, noting Honeywell’s effort to tune SURF-A thresholds to minimize nuisance alerts while preserving early warning.
Uptake of the technologies remains shaped by regulatory, cost, and operator process considerations. Honeywell executives told reporters that roughly 20 to 25% of commercial aircraft globally use Smart X-type capabilities—a figure consistent with Honeywell’s blog assertion that “about 5,000 commercial aircraft,” or roughly 20% of the fleet, have SmartRunway/SmartLanding installed. While Alaska Airlines adopted early, and Southwest is now moving fleetwide, broader deployment will depend on airline training timelines and regulatory direction.&nbsp;
AIN has followed SURF-A’s development <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2024-06-11/honeywell-aims-improve-runway-safety-surf">since 2024</a>, when Honeywell first previewed 30-second incursion alerts and the four-callout scheme on flights between Seattle and Yakima, with a then-projected 12- to 18-month path to approval. Honeywell now pegs transport-category certification to 2026, while continuing to explore forward-fit display enhancements under the SURF-A program with OEM partners.
With global traffic growing and runway infrastructure largely fixed, layers of protection matter. Smart X aims to break the chain that leads to excursions and wrong-surface events, while SURF-A is intended to buy pilots time—often just seconds—to avoid incursions.
“Every second counts,” Feyereisen said.

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