World Airways has selected the Universal Avionics terrain awareness warning system (TAWS) for retrofit to its Boeing MD-11 fleet as the pace of new applications picks up in advance of the looming March 2005 US Federal Aviation Administration deadline for installing the safety system.
The first system will be fitted on an MD-11 in mid-June, says Arizona-based Universal, which says the rate of re-equipping is showing a rapid increase this year. Commercial installations completed to date also include McDonnell Douglas DC-8/DC-9s operated by Airborne Express, and DC-8s and Boeing 727s flown by Astar (formerly DHL Airways), as well as Spirit Airlines Boeing MD-80s, Gemini Air Cargo DC-10s and Air Canada Jazz Bombardier Dash 8s. "Many more are committed," adds the company, which does not yet know if World Airways will order its TAWS for its forthcoming fleet of Boeing 767-300ERs.
The Universal system on the MD-11 will consist of a single TAWS and global positioning receiver on each aircraft, and will be displayed on the aircraft's existing Honeywell electronic flight instrument system.
Hollingshead International is providing integration engineering, installation kits and FAA certification. Flightdecks already equipped with Universal's MFD-640 multi-function display and UNS-1 flight management system are also capable of incorporating different display formats for the TAWS warning function, as well as a "flight path intent" feature.
This provides a warning of a possible terrain conflict as soon as a waypoint is put into the FMS, avoiding inadvertent navigation errors such as that involved in the December 1995 American Airlines 757 controlled flight into terrain accident at Cali, Colombia, in which all 163 on board died.
Source: Flight International
