Good News For Anxious Fliers: Improved Runway Safety Technology Boosts Flight Security For Travelers In The US, Europe and Asia, Here’s All You Need To Know
Home»TRAVEL NEWS UPDATES» Good News For Anxious Fliers: Improved Runway Safety Technology Boosts Flight Security For Travelers In The US, Europe and Asia, Here’s All You Need To Know
Monday, July 7, 2025
Safety is never very far from flyers’ minds, and new technologies developed specifically for use by pilots during certain phases of flight are now providing passengers with that additional element of safety. America’s largest fleet in Boeing 737 aircraft has recently installed advanced runway safety software in nearly all the aircraft in its fleet. Preinstalled in Boeing and Airbus aircraft, this software helps pilots in critical phases like taxiing, takeoff, and landing by warning about potential hazards. It works in pretty much the same way as advanced driver assistance in cars, which warns drivers about blind spots and potential collisions.
What is Runway Safety Software and How Does It Work?
The newly activated runway safety technology provides pilots with verbal and text alerts during taxiing, takeoff, and landing. The alerts help ensure the flight crew stays aware of their surroundings, particularly if they are moving too fast, ascending too quickly, or heading toward the wrong runway. This system can be likened to an additional set of eyes and ears for pilots, helping them stay aware of potential hazards even during critical moments when there’s little margin for error.
The software aims to help avoid runway incursions, a common cause of accidents. It is designed to prevent near-misses and keep flights on course during the most complex phases of flight. With increased air traffic and crowded skies, the technology provides vital assistance in maintaining safety.
The Growing Need for Safety Technology in Aviation
The adoption of this safety technology is timely, especially given the increasing number of aviation incidents and close calls that have garnered media attention in recent years. For example, in December 2024, air traffic controllers at Los Angeles International Airport had to stop a charter jet from landing on a runway while a Delta flight was taking off. Similarly, a Southwest flight in Orlando, Florida, nearly took off from a taxiway instead of a runway, requiring an air traffic controller’s intervention.
Perhaps the most tragic incident that highlighted the need for improved runway safety was a midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in January 2025. The collision between an American Airlines commercial plane and an Army helicopter resulted in 67 fatalities, marking the deadliest U.S. air disaster in over two decades.
A Safer Future for Fliers: How the Technology Works
Runway safety technology has been around for years, with its benefits recognized by aviation experts. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) first recommended such technology in 2000, urging the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to make runway alerts mandatory. In 2018, the NTSB concluded that Honeywell’s technology would likely have prevented a near-miss at San Francisco Airport, further highlighting its potential value.
Despite the technology’s long availability, it wasn’t widely adopted until recently. The decision to implement it across Southwest Airlines’ fleet in 2024 was a significant move, though other airlines have been hesitant due to the costs associated with activation. The software, while a significant safety advantage, is not free, and this financial consideration may have delayed its adoption.
Why Now? Changing Industry Dynamics Drive Adoption
Several factors contributed to Southwest Airlines’ decision to activate this safety technology, including the challenges posed by a rapidly changing aviation landscape. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many experienced pilots retired, leaving the industry with a less-experienced workforce. The influx of newer pilots into the industry, combined with an increasing volume of air traffic, has made runway safety even more critical.
As skies become busier and infrastructure struggles to keep pace, technology like this runway safety system offers a cost-effective way to enhance safety. For Southwest Airlines, the activation of this software not only provides a safety benefit but also offers operational advantages, helping ensure that flights run smoothly and safely, especially as the industry recovers from pandemic-era disruptions.
Expanding Adoption: Industry Trends and Future Outlook
Southwest Airlines’ activation of runway safety software represents a significant shift in the industry. While Southwest is the first major airline to implement the system, it is likely that other carriers will follow suit. The technology’s ability to prevent accidents and near-misses during critical phases of flight makes it a valuable tool for airlines aiming to improve safety and operational efficiency.
The technology’s adoption also reflects the broader trend of increasing safety measures in aviation. The Air Line Pilots Association, International, has supported the mandatory installation of alerting systems like the one Southwest has activated. The industry’s increasing focus on safety, particularly in response to recent incidents, highlights the growing importance of such innovations.
Honeywell, the manufacturer of the runway safety system, has already seen interest from other airlines. Alaska Airlines, for example, activated a precursor to the system in 2008. With the growing recognition of the technology’s benefits, more airlines are expected to enable the system soon.
Safety in Numbers: The Swiss Cheese Model and Accident Prevention
While aviation accidents are rare, they do tend to occur during critical phases of flight, such as takeoff and landing. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), accidents have decreased globally over the years, from 3.72 per million flights in 2005 to 1.13 per million in 2024. Despite this improvement, accidents are still often preceded by a series of small failures, and if one of those failures is caught in time, a disaster can be avoided.
This concept is known as the “Swiss cheese model,” a popular framework used in aviation to explain how multiple, seemingly minor failures can align to cause a major incident. The runway safety technology adopted by Southwest and other airlines helps reduce the likelihood that those “holes” will align, adding an extra layer of protection.
Boosting Passenger Trust
There’s additional comfort for commuters in the arrival of safety tech in runways. While aviation has all along been the most dependable mode of transport, this type of technological advance makes it safer yet. This safety tech provides all and sundry with that additional confidence that airlines and pilots now have the resources they require in order to avoid risks.
In the end, widespread industry implementation of runway safety technology can go a long way towards preventing accidents, minimizing near-misses, and generally creating a safer and better passenger flight experience. As airlines continue to take this technology into wider use, the entire industry as a whole moves one step closer towards safer, more efficient, and reliable air travel for all.
The Foreign Office has detailed advice for people travelling to Egypt this summer
Kieran Isgin Money & Lifestyle writer
16:16, 10 Jul 2025
Some areas in Egypt are advised against travelling to(Image: Getty Images)
Many people planning their summer getaways this year should be aware that there are many areas in the world where Bris are advised to not travel.
This can be for a variety of reasons, including political tensions and risks of terrorism that could pose a threat to British travellers. Furthermore, if you choose to ignore advice from the Foreign Office, you could be at risk of invalidating your travel insurance, potentially leading to costly fees in the case of a medical emergency.
The Foreign Office also warns that there is a “high threat of terrorist attacks globally affecting UK interests and British nationals”. Additionally, it warns that terrorists are “likely” to attempt an attack within Egyptian borders.
Official guidance adds: “Terrorist attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreign nationals. Stay aware of your surroundings, keep up to date with local media reports and follow the advice of local authorities. Be vigilant in crowds and large gatherings.”
All the areas in Egypt where you shouldn’t travel
A wide variety of areas in Egypt are warned against travelling to, with only a few exceptions being made for essential travel. This includes:
Egypt-Libya border – all travel within 20km of the border, except for El Salloum for essential travel
North Sinai
Northern parts of South Sinai – except essential travel beyond the St Catherine-Nuweibaa road and South Sinai Governorate and coastal areas along the west and east of the peninsula
Easten part of Ismailiyah Governorate – all but essential travel east of the Suez Canal
Hala’ib Triangle and Bir Tawil Trapezoid – except essential travel
The FCDO also advises against all but essential travel to west of the the Nile Valley and Nile Delta region, except for the following exceptions:
the coastal areas between the Nile Delta and Marsa Matruh
the Faiyum Governorate
the White Desert and Black Desert
the oasis town of Siwa
the oasis towns of Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla (Mut) and Kharga
Luxor, Qina, Aswan, Abu Simbel and the Valley of the Kings
the Marsa Matruh-Siwa road
the Giza Governorate north-east of the Bahariya Oasis
Official guidance also provides the exceptions for the following roads between the desert area and the Nile valley:
the road between Kharga and Baris
the road between Baris and Luxor
the road between Farafra, Dakhla (Mut) and Kharga
the road between Giza and Farafra and within 50km either side of this road (but FCDO advises against all but essential travel on the road between Bahariya and Siwa)
All-inclusive family package holidays booked from the UK have been getting more expesive, according to new data that has shown a surge in prices at some summer hotspots favoured among Brits.
Figures collected by TravelSupermarket for the BBC show that the top five most-searched holiday destinations – Spain, Greece, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Portugal – have all experienced price rises
Trips to the UAE have seen the largest spike in price, rising 26 per cent from £1,210 in August 2024, to £1,525 in August 2025.
The figures are based on online searches made on TravelSupermarket from 18 April to 17 June, for all-inclusive, seven-night family holidays in August 2025, compared it to the same month in 2024.
Popular holiday destination Spain has seen a jump in the average cost per person from £835 in August 2024, to £914 in 2025.
The average price in Greece has risen from £926 to £1,038 per person, while Turkey has surged from £874 to £1,003.
Meanwhile, the average price for a week in August in Cyprus, which was number nine in the top 10 most searched, has seen a large jump of 23 per cent from £950 per person to £1,166.
Based on these price hikes, travel agents said they have seen families booking shorter stays or travelling mid-week to try to keep the costs lower.
“Last year we did a lot for 10 nights and this year we’ve got a lot of people dropping to four or seven nights, just a short little weekend vacation, just getting away in the sun,” Luke Fitzpatrick, a travel consultant at Perfect Getaways in Liverpool, told the BBC.
Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of travel agent industry group Advantage Travel Partnership, told the news agency that the jump in price for package holidays could be for a range of reasons.
“These increases simply keep pace with the broader cost of doing business and reflect the reality of higher operational costs, from increased energy bills affecting hotels, to elevated food costs impacting restaurants and rising wages across the hospitality sector,” she said.
She added that despite the rise in price, the industry group was seeing that some holidaymakers are still willing to put money towards a trip and even splash out on extra perks.
Some customers have been upgrading to premium all-inclusive packages, as well as booking more expensive cabin seats on long-haul flights to destinations such as Dubai, she explained.
While some areas of the world are seeing the price of a package holiday soar, not all destinations popular among Brits are experiencing a surge in costs.
TravelSupermarket says that out of the top 10 most searched countries, Italy and Tunisia have actually seen prices drop by 11 per cent and four per cent, respectively, compared to 2024.
Earlier this year, research by holiday company On the Beach found that all-inclusive package holidays have appealed beyond families to Generation Z. The study found a four per cent year-on-year rise amongst Gen Z travellers, with them accounting for 55 per cent of bookings.
Royal County Down Golf Club is Number One on Golf Digest’s 100 Greatest Courses in the World, and … More one of the places Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts has made golf travel even better.
getty
In recent years, a new hospitality brand called Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts has quietly been making big waves in high-end golf travel. They have made visits to some of the world’s greatest destinations and most highly ranked courses easier, better and more luxurious. But they just took the biggest single step in the company’s history, announced yesterday.
Making Golf Travel Better
Marine & Lawn’s strategy has been novel yet elegantly simple. They acquire existing hotels—often the best hotel—in iconic pilgrimage golf destinations, then pump vast amounts of capital into renovations. Many of these would be better characterized as overhauls, reopening with far more luxurious lodging, dining, drinking and everything else you want in a luxury golf vacation. They started in the birthplace of the game, and golf’s most “Bucket List” destination, Scotland, before moving on to Northern Ireland, and now, the United States.
When I say the top destinations in golf, that is no exaggeration. While Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts has just seven hotels in the British Isles, those all sit immediately at, or extremely close to, a Who’s Who of the world’s greatest courses. Close as in walking distance to the first tee close. As prolific golf journalist Shaun Tolson wrote in MasterCard Luxury Magazine, “proximity to world-class golf is at the nucleus of every Marine & Lawn hotel.” On the current 2024-2025 Golf Digest World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses list, they have the top four spots, five of the top six, and six of top nine. That is no small thing.
If you like stumbling from your bed to the first tee, no location at the fabled St. Andrews Old … More Course can beat Rusacks Hotel.
Getty Images
For example, one of Marine & Lawn’s properties is Rusacks Hotel in St. Andrews, which literally abuts the oldest and most famous golf layout on earth, the Old Course, the first choice of just about everyone who plays if they could play one spot. I’ve been to St. Andrews several times, and while Rusacks has been there for more than 200 years and has always had an unbeatable location, it’s fair to say it has never been as good as it is now, taking its place among Scotland’s top golf course hotels. On Rusacks, Tolson noted that, “A through renovation put a modern spin on the property’s traditional Scottish style and was desperately needed.” Lodgings are more sumptuous than ever, the food is great, the below ground classic bar is fantastic, and they added a rooftop restaurant and bar, all the craze around the globe but even better when overlooking golf’s most hallowed ground. Greatly improved food and beverage has been a Marine & Lawn hallmark since day one.
Great Golf in Northern Ireland
This year’s 2025 Open Championship returns to Northern Ireland’s Royal Portrush, the only place the British Open has ever been played outside Great Britain. When the dust settles from the event and traveling leisure golfers return, they will want to stay at Marine & Lawn’s Portrush Adelphi, a massively upgraded seaside property that instantly became the top choice in a golf mad destination that also includes nearby 36-hole Ballyliffin, with two stunning links layouts on the coast, the northernmost in Ireland.
The British Open and its Claret Jug are returning to Royal Portrush, one of the world’s best golf … More courses
R&A via Getty Images
Their portfolio also includes the venerable Slieve Donard, long the must-stay spot for golfers visiting Northern Ireland’s Royal County Down, by many estimates, the world’s greatest golf course period. It is Number One on Golf Digest’s list and having played it a couple of times, I understand why.
Great Golf in Scotland
On the other hand, many pundits would give that best-on-earth title to Muirfield, a sixteen-time host of the Open Championship and likely the only tee-time in Scotland harder to get than the Old Course. The classic spot to stay while playing Muirfield has always been Greywalls, an Edwardian estate overlooking the 10th tee, and yesterday Marine & Lawn announced the acquisition of that gem. Designed by renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1901, it was privately owned by the Weaver family since 1926, and now Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts.
Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts just acquired Greywalls, a legendary golf hotel next to the 10th tee … More at Scotland’s Muirfield.
Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts
Through a close and longstanding relationship with The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, the club that calls Muirfield home, Greywalls has always had the rare luxury of securing a handful of allocated tee times so it can offer stay and play packages on this incredibly hard to access course. The announcement is so new that Marine & Lawn has not decided what if any renovations are needed beyond upgrading the culinary offerings, nor what changes will be made to its packages, but it is a good guess that their hotel will continue to have the distinction of being the place to stay for such special access to tee times.
Besides Rusacks and now Greywalls, they also have the Marine Hotel in Troon, a longtime classic and the place to stay when visiting British Open venue Royal Troon or nearby Prestwick, birthplace of the British Open Championship, one of the world’s most fun courses, and a personal favorite of mine. In 2022 when the hotel reopened, the London Times wrote: “Maximalist design and MasterChef-style food are on the menu at this revamped golf course hotel.”
Then there’s the Marine North Berwick, Scotland, surrounded by arguably the densest concentration of standout courses on earth, including two in the World Top 10. Further north, Dornoch Station is the top choice for those making the golf pilgrimage to remote Royal Dornoch—ranked Number Two in the World by Golf Digest.
Great Golf in the United States
Unlike U.S. golf resorts, at most of the top spots in the British Isles the courses are private clubs, even when open to the public, and the lodging is unaffiliated, so simply having a hotel next to a great course does not mean guests can get on it. However, in most of these cases, Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts has a very close working relationship with its neighbors, and while they typically do not guarantee tee times or offer the kind of turnkey golf and accommodations packages many U.S. resorts do, they can try, have an inside track, and are often your best bet.
Massively renovated guest rooms are coming to Mid-Pines and Pine Needles, as shown in this rendering … More of the new design.
Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts
The situation is a little bit different here at the company’s first domestic acquisition, and probably its most newsworthy. Along with Greywalls, Marine & Lawn just announced the purchase of twin resorts Pine Needles Lodge and Mid-Pines Inn in Southern Pines, NC, just outside Pinehurst, the “Home of Golf in America.”
These twin resorts were built in the 1920 and sit directly across the road from each other and have long been owned by the same family and operated as two sides of the same property, with guests sharing access to food, drink and the three golf courses. I visited recently, and the golf is simply exceptional, with three original Donald Ross gems that have been painstakingly restored in recent years, and all three are ranked in the Top 40 in the U.S. by Golf Magazine—something not even Pebble Beach can claim. The recently renovated Southern Pines Country Club was private for most of the past century, but since being upgraded and added to the resort portfolio, it has exploded onto the scene and is the only course in the region that stands toe to toe with legendary Number Two at Pinehurst, the area’s other “must play.” The other two are excellent as well, and Pine Needles hosted the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open.
A new Clubhouse is also in the plans for Southern Pines.
Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts
Pine Needles and Mid-Pines have always had a cult following and serious players know how good the courses are. In addition, the resorts have a standout golf academy with a large, dedicated teaching facility. But the weak link has always been the average accommodations and limited cuisine, while sitting in the shadow of the massive Pinehurst Resort, the nation’s largest, which has received decades of continuous reinvestment, has tons of dining and myriad lodging options, and is by any standard, one of the world’s greatest golf destinations. But if anyone is going to give them a run for their money, it is Marine & Lawn, which has already announced plans for a much-needed comprehensive restoration led by parent company AJ Capital’s design team, featuring fully renovated guestrooms, new dining concepts, and refreshed public spaces. The resorts should remain open with renovations on a rolling basis, beginning this year with hopes for completion in 2026.
The family owner of Pine Needles and Mid-Pines did an excellent job with golf, and they are keeping that part of the operation, with Marine & Lawn buying the hotels, not the courses. Nonetheless, the close relationship will almost certainly continue in the form of easily booked preferential tee times for guests and stay and play packages, as has been the case until now. Both partners are very good at what they do, and my informed guess is that few guests will notice any separation and by all appearances, Mid-Pines and Pine Needles will continue to be one of the top golf resorts in the country, only better.
All of this is big travel news for golfers at some of the world’s best golf courses, here and in Europe. Or as Ben Weprin, founder of Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts and CEO of AJ Capital Partners put it in his announcement, “These acquisitions represent a pivotal milestone for Marine & Lawn. Since launching the brand in 2019, our ambition has always been to honor golf’s most legendary locales with world-class hospitality. The addition of these iconic properties—each with deep roots in golf’s history—allows us to bring that vision to life on both sides of the Atlantic.”
