http://www.hiltonsoftware.com/FeatureSmartTaxi.html

$129.95

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"Jim Carter" wrote in message
news:002701c6e7bb$b46227b0$4001a8c0@omnibook6100.. .
I've followed the lengthy and somewhat heated discussion speculating
responsibility in the LEX accident, but I've not seen any thread on
improvements other than a few comments about traffic lights on runways, or
more people added to the system to double-check the double-checkers. I'm
interested in what the industry might do to achieve a technical solution
with relatively small front-end cost and very, very little operational cost.
(As you suspect, I have nothing to do with the government or any of its
agencies).

I find myself wondering what the cost of a low-power ground radar capable of
interpreting transponder codes, coupled to a small (not much horsepower)
computer capable of matching the geo-coords of the txpdr to the assigned
runway (or taxiway) and triggering an alarm if the variance is too great.
This should all be off-the-shelf technology, shouldn't be considered a
"flight critical" or "safety-of-flight" system (so if it goes down for a few
hours only the local information would change), and shouldn't have to be
maintained other than for hardware failures. With the low-power and digital
technology even the non-critical radar could be maintained by break-fix
only. Developed into an appliance type system, these could be mass produced
to lower the cost even more.

It seems to me that by adding traffic lights implies that we now have to add
an additional duty to the ground / flight controller which introduces the
human factor an additional time. Additionally, the traffic light relies on
the crews on parallel runways knowing which light/runway they are really
on - a seeming failure at LEX. Adding more controllers to the system doesn't
yield the best return on investment either. Non-critical repetitive tasks
should be automated where possible.