Airbus Runway Overrun Prevention System (ROPS) recognized by the aviation community

Making the already safest mode of transportation in the world even safer

The Airbus team responsible for the design and implementation of ROPS has been nominated in the Avionics & Systems category of the 57th annual Aviation Week Laureate Awards. The winners of this prestigious award will be announced March six.

The patented Airbus ROPS system computes minimum realistic in-flight landing and on-ground stopping distances and compares them to available landing distances in real time. The system combines data on weather, runway condition and topography, and aircraft weight and configuration. Depending on the resulting analysis, ROPS may prompt immediate callouts and alerts for pilots, assisting the crew in the go-around, decision-making process and/or the timely application of stopping means on touchdown.

Runway excursion, meaning either an aircraft veering off the side of the runway or overrunning at the very end, has become the primary cause of civil airliner hull losses in recent years, particularly as other formerly prevalent categories of aircraft accidents have now largely been eliminated. Various industry bodies including the EASA, NTSB, Eurocontrol and FAA recognize this and are fully behind the introduction of effective measures by commercial aviation stakeholders to not only mitigate, but eliminate the risk of runway excursions.

In the future, we expect this system to provide further savings to airlines by allowing them to demonstrate to insurance companies the benefits derived from ROPS.

For more information contact:
Olivier Richaud
A320 Marketing Manager
olivier.richaud@airbus.com