Southwest Airlines Cockpit Enhancement

**This an older story but one I find very interesting.**

Southwest Airlines Co. changes the way it flies, which is a major milestone in the push to modernize the nation's air travel system. For passengers, the last 20 minutes of a flight may feel more graceful as planes glide in without revving up engines repeatedly.

This past April 6, the airline changed out the cockpit software in two-thirds of its fleet, giving pilots different instruments and a new look to displays. The radical upgrade, which took three years of preparation and required retraining 6,000 pilots, will enable Southwest to fly precise satellite-based navigation approaches to airports. That should save fuel, cut noise and reduce delays.

That flip-the-switch change pushes airlines closer to a modern air-traffic control system. Using more-precise approaches to airports called Required Navigation Performance (RNP) routes, airplanes can shorten their flights. The paths laid out in the sky that planes use into and out of airports will be much narrower, removing overlap between different airports in congested cities.

Without the new technology, planes flying into Chicago's Midway Airport, for example, may have to wait for an opening in the line of planes taking off nearby from Chicago's O'Hare airport when winds are from the south because the routes overlap. Now, most of Southwest's planes won't have to wait. The same "decoupling" is planned for New York, Houston, Dallas and other major airline chokepoints.

"That's a huge step," said FAA Administrator Randolph Babbitt. Only a handful of airports have RNP procedures in place, but about 20 that Southwest flies to will have them by the end of the year. For passengers, RNP will be a different experience. Instead of lining up miles away from an airport to land and then stair-stepping down by descending and then powering up engines to level off over and over, airplanes will glide at idle almost all the way to touchdown. The descent will be continuous and quieter. Some turns will be tight close to airports. It will feel like the plane is swooping in at the last few minutes of flight instead of long, drawn-out approaches. Southwest is not the first airline to start flying RNP approaches-Alaska Air Group Inc.'s Alaska Airlines pioneered the technology, and several airlines have it turned on in some of their newest planes.

But Southwest is the biggest. The Dallas-based carrier, which operates more flights than any other carrier worldwide, is the first to commit to "Next Generation" technology fleet-wide, paying for cockpit upgrades itself. Airlines have been pushing Congress and the White House for federal funding to pay for new equipment required for the modernized air-traffic-control system; the issue is still undecided in Washington.

The technology means planes don't have to fly in straight lines for instrument landings using radio signals in low visibility; they can fly shorter, curved approaches in any weather conditions. Southwest believes it will get back its $175 million investment by shortening flights, saving fuel. If just one minute is shaved off every flight, on average, Southwest says it will recoup its investment. The airline hopes for even more savings. The FAA has to deliver by designing RNP routes and procedures, akin to building the highways for cars and trucks to use. After decades of delay in implementing satellite-based technology-including the kind of GPS many people have in their cars and phones-the FAA is moving faster to upgrade.

"We've left the drawing board. Now we're in implementation," said FAA's Mr. Babbitt. While the FAA is trying to design RNP procedures quickly and get air-traffic controllers trained in mixing RNP traffic with old-style procedures, progress may not be as fast as airlines want, he said.

Southwest worries that the FAA will simply lay new RNP procedures over existing routes, using the same long paths that planes fly today in order to avoid upsetting any neighborhoods underneath new flight paths. That would nullify any benefit from shorter routes that reduce fuel burn, emission and time or separating traffic from two airports. Designing new paths can mean environmental and noise impact and legal fights with neighborhoods worried about noise overhead, even though RNP approaches are quieter because engines are usually at idle.

"If the government only does overlays, then we have wasted $175 million," Mr. Martin said. One problem unique to RNP: the routes are so precise that if your home is under one, every plane passes overhead. With today's less precise routes, the path of jets is more diffuse so no one home gets every passing plane overhead.

The FAA is pushing airlines to modernize their equipment, even as the agency struggles to modernize its own gear, by adopting a strategy of best-equipped, best-served. So planes that can handle RNP approaches will get priority from air-traffic controllers over aircraft that aren't equipped at airports that have RNP in place. Today, it's first-come, first-serve regardless of equipment. The threat of being delayed behind better-equipped jets will serve as an incentive for airlines to quickly upgrade, the FAA says.
For Southwest, the technology push runs contrary to the airline's long-standing flying philosophy of keeping pilots alert and skilled by making them fly takeoffs and landings by hand rather than rely on autopilot computers. While RNP approaches can be flown by hand, the precision required means pilots often prefer having the autopilot fly the airplane.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time, automation serves you well. You just want to make sure pilots can handle it when things get upset or the electronics goes catawampus," said one senior Southwest captain.

Southwest says it has still retained lots of hand-flying in its procedures to keep skills sharp. One example: Instead of using computer-driven systems for landings in very low visibility as most airlines do, Southwest has a military-like "head's up" screen-a piece of glass that folds down in front of the captain's eyes and displays navigation guidance-in its planes where the captain hand-flies even in the worst weather.

The airline's pilots union says its members resisted the change early on, but have been won over by the company's training program and the advantages of RNP and automation. "If done correctly, this can be safer. And it can help us get in and out of some places," said Jacob North, a Southwest first officer and communications chairman of the Southwest Pilots' Association.
Southwest put each of its pilots through a ground-school course on the new cockpit equipment and rewrote all of its flight procedures. The airline had to buy an additional flight simulator just to give pilots four hours each of cockpit flying for the RNP transition. (Pilots also received a software program to practice at home on personal computers.)

Beginning next year, the rest of Southwest's fleet-older Boeing 737-300s and 737-500s-will get completely new cockpits, basically moving them from analog to digital, from old-style round-dial gauges to modern multi-function displays. Instead of separate instruments to show air speed, altitude, heading, climb or descent rate and flight path, for example, modern cockpits have all that information in one display, making it easier for pilots to see all important data without scanning back and forth to multiple gauges. The newer cockpits in the airline's Boeing 737-700 fleet will be upgraded with a software change-screens that displayed one type of instruments simply display the new instruments with the April 6 changeover.

"We have rewritten every manual we have," said Southwest's Mr. Martin. "This is the most complicated project we've ever taken on."