Sea-Tac's Alaska Airlines will become the first major airline to equip its entire fleet with a new electronic sensor system designed to avoid runway and taxiway collisions and overruns, the airline announced today. The Honeywell-built Runway Awareness and Advistory System will give pilots audible cues of the runway and taxiway they're on or moving toward and warn them if the runway is too short for takeoff. The system will ensure that pilots, sometimes operating in the dark and under poor visibility, correctly identify the runway. Confusion over what runway they were using has resulted in several major crashes over the last decade by some airlines. In August 2006, for instance, a Comair pilots with 47 aboard a commuter jet misidentified a runway in Lexington, Ky. They tried unsuccessfully to take off on a runway that was half the length of the one they were supposed to use. Forty-seven passengers and two crew members died. In October 2000, a Singapore Airlines 747 attempted to take off from a runway closed for construction in Taiwan. The jet collided with construction equipment on the runway and split in half. Eighty-three of 179 people aboard died. The runway and the construction were obscured by darkness and heavy rain. The Runway Awareness and Advisory System is the latest of several high technology safety systems Alaska has installed on its fleet. The airline was the pioneer in using a satellite navigation system called Requir ...
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