Can technology prevent airplanes from flying into government buildings or nuclear power plants? Honeywell International declared Friday that it is exploring a new assisted recovery system to deal with such a problem.

The new avionics software could anticipate in-flight dangers like windshear, or any rapidly changing wind currents posing danger to aircrafts, and other air traffic and terrain obstacles to help pilots avoid them, claimed Larry Kittelberger, chairman of Honeywell's Technology Leadership Council, on Friday at the Honeywell Technology Forum.

The software, named the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS), could momentarily provide flight control to an aircraft that is heading for terrain, obstacles, or prohibited areas if the pilot does not respond to alerts given by the system. The Assisted Recovery system gives the pilots a few seconds to respond to a terrain or obstacle warning. Then, if the pilots do not make a correcting maneuver in the allotted time, the software commands the aircraft's flight control system to maneuver, avoiding the danger. Once the danger has passed, the system returns control to the pilots.

The system could assist the aircraft in maneuvering to avoid collision with another aircraft, helping to prevent tragic situations that could result from confusion, added Ed Wheeler, vice president of Honeywell Aerospace's engineering and technology department. It could also be used to maneuver the aircraft in response to a windshear alert from the airplane's weather radar system.

Honeywell International is a 26-billion-dollar diversified technology and manufacturing corporation. It constitutes one of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average and also a component of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Source: Xinhua