By Art Wager / Getty Images
The United States' largest airports are now equipped with software capable of analyzing the behavior of planes preparing to land. Its purpose is to send an alert if one appears to be in danger of landing on a taxiway rather than on a dedicated runway.
The United States' largest airports are now equipped with software capable of analyzing the behavior of planes preparing to land. Its purpose is to send an alert if one appears to be in danger of landing on a taxiway rather than on a dedicated runway.
The government agency responsible for civil aviation regulations and controls in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), announced the roll-out of new software to alert air traffic controllers when an approaching aircraft is in position to land on a taxiway rather than its dedicated runway.
The software, called ASDE-X Taxiway Arrival Prediction (ATAP), is already installed in some 40 major airports in the country. It uses radar and various sensors to "predict" the trajectory of approaching aircraft, and thus determine whether or not they are in position to for a safe landing. If it appears that one of them is headed for a taxiway rather than a runway, the software immediately alerts controllers to the potential problem. They can then communicate with the pilots affected.
A taxiway is a route used by aircraft to connect runways to terminals. In many locations taxiways run parallel to runways, and pilots can sometimes confuse the two on their approaches. If you land on one of them, there is a high risk of colliding with another aircraft.
Fortunately, this is rather rare, but the FAA has nonetheless recorded more than 1500 such "incidents" between the end of 2016 and the end of 2022. Although they didn't cause any injuries, some of these even involved large aircraft, hence the importance of implementing this new technology. Since the beginning of the year, eight alerts have been launched by the ATAP software, resulting in the aircraft involved being prompted to correct their trajectory before landing.
