Honeywell safety system to reduce runway incursions selected by Boeing

Honeywell (NYSE: HON) announced today Boeing will begin offering a standardized version of Honeywell's Runway Awareness and Advisory System (RAAS), a part of Honeywell's new SmartRunway(TM) safety program that provides visual and aural alerts to the crew about runway situational awareness, as a forward-fit option on 777 and 747-8 aircraft, available beginning in late 2009.

Next-Generation 737 will follow suit with offerability in early 2010. Boeing retrofit service bulletins are planned to follow production offerability.

"One runway incursion happens daily on average worldwide, at a cost to the industry of about $100 million a year," said TK Kallenbach, Honeywell Vice President of Product Management. "Making SmartRunway available reflects the strong commitment from Boeing and Honeywell to reduce runway incursions and increase safety at today's crowded airport environments."

"Boeing supports technology that adds another layer of safety to the aviation system. We continue to work with Honeywell and other industry stakeholders to develop technologies that will provide a significant enhancement to aviation safety," said Corky Townsend, Director of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Safety.

Honeywell's SmartRunway is a software enhancement to Honeywell's proven Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) that is basic standard equipment on all Boeing production aircraft. SmartRunway improves pilot situational awareness and helps break the chain of events that can lead to a runway incursion, by providing aural and visual information during taxi, takeoff, final approach, landing and rollout. Using Global Positioning System (GPS) data, SmartRunway alerts are based on aircraft position compared to airport runway locations stored Honeywell's worldwide terrain and runway database, which has proven itself for over 600 million flight hours.

Boeing's standardized configuration of Honeywell's new SmartRunway feature includes all the audio callouts previously offered in Honeywell's RAAS software with added visual alerts. Boeing has standardized the SmartRunway configuration that works best for their 777, 747-8 and Next-Generation 737 platforms. This standard configuration improves runway awareness in the air and during ground operations and reduces selection and implementation time for airlines.

Honeywell introduced RAAS in 2004, and has continued to expand this technology and focus on runway safety with their new SmartRunway offering. The safety technology is installed on more than 200 air transport and 1,470 business aircraft, with another 800 airline systems on order.