Garmin announced today it has received certification for its runway occupancy awareness (ROA) software, Surface Indications and Alert (SURF-IA). The software uses ADS-B traffic information to identify potential runway incursions involving airborne traffic, aircraft on the ground, and ground vehicles. Textron Aviation received FAA certification for the product installed on a G1000 NXi-equipped Cessna Caravan.
ROA technology assesses GPS and ADS-B traffic data relevant to the airport’s runway and taxiway status, alerting crews to possible incursions. Caution and warning alerts are presented visually and aurally to advise the crew of potential hazardous conflicts. “ROA provides visual crew-alerting system (CAS) caution and warning annunciations on the pilot’s primary flight display (PFD) and highlights the runway yellow or red, depending on the level of threat, on Garmin’s Synthetic Vision Technology (SVT),” according to Garmin. Alerts range from “no immediate collision hazard” to a “warning level alert” during which a collision could occur within 15 seconds.
Next will be certification for the ROA software in the Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) for the G5000 avionics suite in the Cessna Citation Excel, XLS, XLS+, and XLS Gen2, scheduled for September. Garmin said it “expects for the technology to be certified on more Garmin-equipped aircraft in the coming months.” Initially, the software will be available for integrated flight decks ranging from the G1000 NXi to the G5000.