By Rajesh Kumar Singh

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) -As a Boeing 757 aircraft prepared to land, an audio alert started blaring in the cockpit: “Traffic on runway! Traffic on runway!” Seconds later, the same warning popped up on the navigation display.

It prompted the pilot to abort the landing to avoid a possible collision. The alert was triggered by a smaller Gulfstream jet that was on the runway.

This was not a real-world incident but a staged test flight of Honeywell’s new cockpit safety system designed to prevent incidents like a near-collision between a Southwest Airlines aircraft and a private jet at Chicago’s Midway Airport in February and a crash at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport last year.

The technology known as SURF-A, or Surface-Alert, is the long-awaited addition to runway safet

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