Honeywell is working on adding crowdsourced weather data to its Weather Information Service app. Honeywell says the new capability, called Connected Radar, will deliver the most complete view of weather along an aircraft’s route by aggregating weather data from radar systems onboard other aircraft in flight.
Connected Radar could be particularly helpful to helicopter pilots and dispatchers, especially those who fly over water where there’s no radar coverage. Pilots who operate in rugged or remote terrain may also benefit from the new capability.
Connected Radar is enabled by Honeywell’s IntuVue RDR-4000 3-D weather radar system, which is present on many commercial airliners. The radar system is able to detect and predict lightning, hail, windshear and turbulence, using volumetric 3-D scanning and pulse compression technologies.
Once Connected Radar is operational, expected this year, it will download weather-hazard data from participating IntuVue-equipped aircraft, combine it with all other inputs and make it immediately available to anyone using the Weather Information Service app.
