Lufthansa Group, Honeywell Aerospace and Airbus have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to work jointly on the development of a runway safety solution combining Airbus’ Runway Overrun Prevention System (ROPS) and Honeywell’s SmartLanding technologies for Lufthansa Group’s fleet.

This cooperation aims to set the highest standard in runway safety by combining the strengths of these two innovative and leading technologies and by making them available for a maximum number of aircraft types.

Lufthansa will place its expertise at the service of Honeywell and Airbus respectively by contributing to the solution design and evaluation with the involvement of flight crews from the early stage of development.

ROPS is a performance-based alerting system developed by Airbus, which assists crews in preventing runway overruns. Certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), ROPS is in operation on approximately 430 aircraft, including A320, A330, A350 and A380 and has been selected by operators of 1,500 aircraft to be delivered.

ROPS is now included in the solutions portfolio of Airbus’ new wholly-owned Flight Operations and Air Traffic Management subsidiary – NAVBLUE.

Honeywell’s SmartLanding system reduces the risk of runway excursion by alerting pilots if the aircraft is approaching the runway too high, too fast or is not configured properly for landing. SmartLanding is a software enhancement to Honeywell’s Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS), installed on more than 30,000 airline and business aviation aircraft.

Through a simple software upgrade to EGPWS, SmartLanding improves pilot situational awareness and helps break the chain of events that can lead to a runway excursion, by providing aural and visual alerts upon approach only if the aircraft has not met established safety criteria.