Kerry Lynch stepped into the role of editor of the&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;monthly magazine in May 2022 after serving with&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;for eight years. She joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in December 2014 as a senior editor covering Washington and business aviation news. She has also served on Convention News teams, including as editor of&nbsp;HAI Convention News. Lynch previously spent 25 years with Aviation Week. During her time there, she reported for and later steered&nbsp;The Weekly of Business Aviation, oversaw business aviation content on the&nbsp;Aviation Week Intelligence Network, served on the&nbsp;Show News&nbsp;staff, and held roles as the Washington columnist for&nbsp;Business &amp; Commercial Aviation&nbsp;and&nbsp;Overhaul &amp; Maintenance&nbsp;monthly magazines. In 2021 she was honored with the National Business Aviation Association Platinum Wing Award for lifetime achievement in journalism and was the 2004 recipient of the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalism Excellence Award. She also has been a recipient of an Aerospace Media Award for business aviation (2022) and NBAA Gold Wing Award (2003, 2024). Lynch graduated from The Ohio State University with a bachelor of arts in journalism.

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Kerry Lynch

Southwest Airlines has begun installing Honeywell’s SmartRunway and SmartLanding technology on its Boeing 737 fleet, the aerospace manufacturer announced on Monday. The capability, enabled through the Honeywell Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS), adds aural and visual alerts to help increase flight crew situational awareness during taxi, takeoff, and landing.
Under an agreement signed in November 2024, plans call to activate the SmartRunway and SmartLanding update through 2027 on more than 700 aircraft. The first revenue flight with the software enabled was completed in March.
The technology will warn pilots of some areas of safety concern during taxi and landing. These include wrong surface operations where a pilot may mistakenly be preparing to take off on a taxiway instead of a runway or on a runway that is too short, as well as attempt to land on the wrong runway, explained Thea Feyereisen, distinguished technical fellow for aerospace technologies at Honeywell.
It also will alert when an aircraft may be coming in too high and/or too fast, creating the potential for runway excursions, Feyereisen added.
“We see an increase in the number of wrong surface and runway excursion examples. We had an incident in the U.S. earlier this year where a [Boeing] 737 mistakenly tried to take off from a taxiway instead of a runway. There was an incident in San Francisco in 2017 where an A320 narrowly missed a collision with four other aircraft when it mistakenly lined up with a taxiway instead of a runway for landing,” Feyereisen cited as examples.
SmartRunway and SmartLanding will provide aural alerts, but back that up with text warnings. As an example, she said if at 1,000 feet the pilots haven’t deployed the flaps, they would receive a flaps alert both aurally and via text.
“If they are too high, above 450 feet, they will get a ‘too high’ or ‘too fast,’ and ‘unstable’ as well. If they haven't touched down in the first approximately one-third of the runway, they would get a long landing call out, and it also provides distance remaining,” she said. “The alerts are not bells or jingles, they're very specific, saying exactly what the problem is.”
Feyereisen estimated that there are a couple of dozen different alerts the system provides. She noted that the aural alerts are more critical “because typically pilots are eyes out” during taxi or landing. “The aural alert is really what captures their attention, and then if there’s any question, there is a text alert as well.”
Feyereisen acknowledged that some runway surface safety technologies may be available to air traffic controllers in the tower. But there is an inherent delay from when controllers receive the alert and when they can convey to the aircraft operator, particularly if someone is talking on the radio at the same time.
The SmartLanding/Runway technology has been around for about a decade, originally called Runway Awareness Alerting System (RAAS). It’s been approved on Airbus and Boeing airplanes.
However, over the past decade, the system has continued to evolve with more and expanded features, such as alerts for landing or taking off on taxiways and the addition of an altimeter monitor. Feyereisen estimated that about 25% of the world’s airline fleet has some version of RAAS installed.
This evolution continues with Honeywell testing its next generation, Surface Alerts (<a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2024-06-11/honeywell-aims-improve-runway-safety-surf">SURF-A</a>), which is targeted for certification in 2026. This alerting system uses GPS data, ADS-B, and analytics to provide aural and text alerts of potential runway traffic.
Airlines have the option of customizing the features, she noted. For example, they can decide when to alert for distance remaining on the runway—5,000 feet remaining versus 4,000 feet or 3,000 feet. “They may choose to have that one as only a display and not the aural alert,” Feyereisen explained.
She underscored the importance of increased adoption of these kinds of technologies. “Air traffic doubles every 15 years,” Feyereisen said, and “aircraft in general are getting smaller. More 737s and A320s are being sold than 747s.
“We're not building a whole lot of new runways. Aircraft are coming in closer and closer to get the throughput. The math speaks for itself in terms of the density of operations that are happening…and the number of incidents increasing.”

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Southwest Airlines is installing Honeywell's SmartRunway and SmartLanding on its entire fleet of Boeing 737s.

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