Emerging Airport Technology Aims to Reduce Runway Incursions

June 9, 2025

Aviation continues to be the world’s safest form of transportation, but, as the FAA reports five U.S. runway incursions on average every day, recent headlines have put this critical airport safety issue into sharper focus.

On Feb. 25, 2025, video from Chicago Midway (MDW) captured a business jet crossing Runway 31 Center in front of a Boeing 737 on approach. Seconds before touching down, the airline flight crew noticed the smaller aircraft on the ground and initiated a go-around. The NTSB is investigating.

While most runway incursions aren’t close calls, the safety issue is concerning. An international runway incursion study led by ICAO, the Flight Safety Foundation and Eurocontrol said runway incursions are “among the most persistent threats to aviation safety.”

In fact, a study of shortcomings within the National Airspace System (NAS) in the wake of several high-profile incursions at major airports contributed to the FAA’s decision to launch its Surface Awareness Initiative (SAI) in late 2023. SAI was created to deliver situational awareness to tower controllers at airports that lack advanced surface surveillance capabilities.

“We are bringing in three-dimensional information. The system will actually show the pilot which line to follow and exactly where they need to go.”

Less than a year later, in April 2024, the FAA, awarded contracts to Saab, Indra and uAvionix to install SAI technology. The first phase of these new surveillance systems went operational in July 2024 at airports in Nashville, TN; Austin, TX; and Florida’s Miami Executive Airport (TMB).

Rob Brown, director of marketing, sales and strategy for air traffic management at Saab Inc., said the rapid deployment of SAI changed how the agency engaged vendors. “The FAA leased, rather than purchased, part of the system. They then pay a monthly fee for service.”

Unlike previous projects where the agency was left responsible for maintaining the systems they purchased, Saab also services the systems the FAA leases. In this case, the agency simplified the system’s technical requirements in order to put new airport surveillance systems into operation quickly, Brown said. For instance, the systems are ADS-B-based, not radar dependent.

“One of the performance requirements demanded the air traffic controller receive updates to their [tower cab] display within one second of a change,” Brown said. He said verification of the entire system is regularly measured and reported each month.

SAI Versus ASDE-X

These new surveillance systems won’t replace traditional radar displays but are expected to improve a controller’s situational awareness of airport runways and taxiways. However, these simpler technologies are not as robust as the FAA’s decades-old Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X (ASDE-X) system, currently running at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (ORD), John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and other major hubs, according to Brown. The FAA intentionally did not include features that might slow down the rollout of capabilities at more airports, Brown said.

For instance, SAI equipment does not employ a traditional radar system regularly sweeping the airport, nor does it include conflict-alerting for controllers at airports in Nashville, Austin, Hollywood Burbank (BUR), San Antonio International Airport (SAT) and others. Brown said that functionality could be added at a later date. The FAA awarded contracts to install SAI systems at 50 airports, with a promise to have them operational by the end of 2025.

Universal Taxi Assist

Another emerging technology designed to reduce runway incursions was unveiled this year. Universal Taxi Assist (UTA), from Universal Avionics, listens to flight deck communications via Bluetooth connected to the pilot’s EFB (electronic flight bag) iPad.

UTA gathers aircraft-specific information like callsign and location. It also translates ground control taxi instructions into text and quickly displays those instructions on an EFB. Although the initial versions of UTA are designed for iPad, later iterations will be released to integrate with third-party systems like ForeFlight or other EFB software.

Universal Avionics CEO Dror Yahav said UTA is designed to avert miscommunications between pilots and controllers, including radio transmissions by fast-talkers or people with thick accents. Also, pilots can become distracted or “may forget what they’ve been told to do,” Yahav said. “Or they might just not accurately translate instructions into action.”

To help mitigate these challenges, UTA is designed to convert conversations into a graphical presentation on an EFB. Pilots just follow a magenta line as they taxi. “We are using some models trained on many different accents,” Yahav said. UTA is designed to understand the correlation between a specific location and typical speech in that region. For example, if UTA is located in the New York area, it is engineered to know that the pace of speech will increase.

Augmented Reality

Also, Universal is adding another situational awareness tool to its system: augmented reality. This functionality is made possible thanks to numerous enhanced vision cameras the company has deployed on customer aircraft for more than 20 years. The system uses imagery from the cameras that’s visible to pilots in real-time on Universal’s head-wearable display or in a multi-function display (MFD).

“We are bringing in three-dimensional information,” Yahav said. “The system will actually show the pilot which line to follow and exactly where they need to go.” The augmented reality will be incorporated into line replaceable units (LRUs) in Universal’s avionics.

If UTA had been up and running at MDW in February 2025, it would have broadcast a definitive warning to the business jet flight crew once the technology determined the aircraft was going to cross the runway, Yahav said.

Overall, industry experts say the quick deployment of SAI combined with other sophisticated technologies indicates that the aviation community is effectively working together to ensure the nation’s airports support the highest levels of safety, both now and in the future.