Southwest Airlines has been quietly installing a new cockpit safety system on its fleet of more than 800 Boeing 737 airplanes that alerts pilots if they are about to land on the wrong runway, or even a taxiway.
The state-of-the-art software has already been installed on around 87% of Southwest’s fleet, according to Phoenix-based Honeywell Aerospace, which created the system.
Revealing details of the deal on the first day of the Paris Air Show on Monday, Honeywell said that Southwest had bought two add-ons to its Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System which have been installed on the airline’s fleet for some time.
The two pieces of software are known as SmartRunway and SmartLanding, which provide both aural and visual alerts in a variety of situations, such as:
- Flying too fast on approach to landing
- Flying too high on approach to landing
- About to land on the wrong runway
The move to install this additional software comes after a series of hair-raising incidents that led to a short-lived safety investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
In one incident in July 2024, a Southwest Boeing 737MAX flying from Columbus, Ohio, to Tampa descended to just 150 feet above Tampa Bay while it was still four miles out from the airport.
The pilots were seemingly unaware of how close they were coming to disaster and it was the intervention of an air traffic controller who issued a low altitude alert that prompted the crew to quickly climb to a safer altitude.
In a more recent incident in March, a Southwest plane nearly took off from a taxiway at Orlando International Airport but was stopped at the last second by an eagle-eyed air traffic controller.
Other incidents include:
February 2025: The pilots of Southwest Flight 2504 took evasive action as it was coming into land at Chicago Midway Airport to avoid colliding with a private jet that taxied onto the runway.
October 2024: At Long Beach Airport, Southwest Flight 1671 landed on a runway that was still occupied by a private Diamond DA40 single-engine light aircraft.
June 2024: On approach to Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, Southwest Flight 4069 descended to just 525 feet above a suburb while still nine miles out from the airport.
June 2024: Southwest Flight 4805 took off from a closed runway at Portland International Jetport (PWM) in Maine.
April 2024: A Southwest flight ‘plunged’ to within 400 feet of the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff from Lihue Airport on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.
March 2023: A Chicago-bound Southwest Boeing 737 took off over an ambulance that had accidentally driven onto the runway at Baltimore International Airport
Last September, Southwest started calling in its pilots for an additional day of training at its headquarters in Dallas, Texas, where crew learned more about recent incidents and how they can “appropriately manage risks.”
“Today’s pilots face increasing challenges, including unpredictable weather and dense traffic in limited airspace, forcing them to make split-second decisions during takeoff and landing,” commented Jim Currier, the president and CEO of Honeywell Aerospace Technologies.
“Fortunately, as the challenges evolve, so does the technology that provides the information they need in real-time,” Currier continued.
Honeywell is also working on a next-generation safety system that it calls SURF-A. This system is a ‘groundbreaking’ cockpit alert tool that is designed to alert pilots to potential runway traffic – in other words, planes or vehicles that are already on a runway that they are about to land on or take off from.
SURF-A uses GPS data and advanced analytics to provide alerts to pilots, although the system is not expected to be certified until 2026.
