While greater safety in flight is always the trump card when it comes to weather radar performance, the core benefits of more modern systems can be measured in dollars and cents. Knowing early and with confidence precisely where heavy weather isn’t can save money by making dispatch and flight planning a lot more efficient and improving en route decision making for crews. That’s where Honeywell’s IntuVue 3-D weather system makes new and important inroads.

AIN got to go along on a press flight aboard Honeywell’s Convair CV-580 demonstrating the benefits of IntuVue. Unfortunately for us, storm chasing in the Northeast has offered slim pickings most of the summer, and taking off from New York La Guardia Airport (KLGA), pilots Joe Duval and Markus Johnson had to fly us almost to North Carolina to chase down some radar returns that were closing in on northern Virginia.

The object of the demonstration was to show how the new version of the radar is more complete, accurate and user friendly. It also weighs a lot less, uses less electrical power and takes up less space in the avionics rack. One of the messages emphasized in the demonstration was the value of the new system in overall cost savings for airlines, not only from delayed or diverted flights, but also in maintenance (damage from hail and lightning strikes) and fuel that would have been burned circumventing areas of suspect weather unnecessarily.

The IntuVue RDR4000 has been available since 2007, and Honeywell recently announced a major software update that will incorporate hazard predictive hail and lightning icons, similar to what is seen on Nexrad. These new features are now possible in an onboard radar because advances in technology have made data collection and processing more sophisticated. Honeywell has worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to develop algorithms that will predict precisely what convective conditions, as perceived by the radar, are most likely to produce damaging lightning and hail. Already in use on some Airbus models, Boeing 737s and coming soon for the Dassault Falcon 7X and Gulfstream G650, the new software will be even more widely available next year.

At the media briefing before the afternoon flight, Jeff Hester, technical sales manager for Honeywell’s Air Transport and Regional (AT&R) division, opened his presentation with an evaluation of how much weather costs the airline industry each year. For example, he said, Bureau of Transportation statistics show that airline flights at major New York-area airports in the first six months of this year experienced a total of 117,495 minutes of delays–the equivalent of 81-and-a-half days. According to U.S. Travel Association research, he said, the average per-flight cost in lost passenger productivity for each hour of flight delay is $3,300.

The FAA estimates 56 million passengers funneled through the big three New York-area airports (JFK, La Guardia and Newark, New Jersey) last year. Between passenger delays and airline expenses, weather delays cost the U.S. economy a grand total of $3.5 billion in 2013, according to the association. Honeywell unrolled a clean sheet of paper to design its IntuVue radar hoping to cut into those costs, not to mention reducing the carbon footprint from all the fuel expended dodging some of that weather.

Tilt Technology Provides a Better View

Honeywell calls IntuVue a 3-D system, as distinguished from what it calls “point-and-shoot” conventional radar. Part of the advantage comes from a more efficient 40-watt transmitter, able to make the most out of its signal thanks to more efficient pulse compression technology. It draws less than a third the power of conventional radars, which are typically rated at 150 watts. (Early onboard radar in the 1950s transmitted as much as 10,000 watts.) The IntuVue transmitter is able to project out 320 nm, and through a 180-degree arc around the nose of the aircraft.

But the most profound element of IntuVue is its automatic tilt adjusting technology. On older systems, pilots manually adjusted the tilt angle of the radar to gain a fuller perspective on the cell they were viewing. The normal antenna position (NAP) places the bottom of the radar scan at four degrees down, covering a small portion of the sky, and potentially missing dangerous weather altogether or minimizing its threat on the display screen.

IntuVue uses proprietary software that automatically adjusts tilt repeatedly, collecting the data of each configuration and storing it. It scans left and right and tilts up and down, covering the sky from ground level to 60,000 feet, a total of 17 tilt values for each scan, which updates every 20 to 30 seconds. It’s almost a CAT scan for the sky in front of the airplane and, like a CAT scan, it stores and interprets what it sees. The IntuVue system compensates for the curvature of the Earth, and also interfaces with Honeywell’s enhanced ground proximity warning system to automatically compensate for changing terrain, so ground clutter doesn’t interfere with the weather data collection process.

In a way, the IntuVue tilt software is like having an expert at radar tilt management checking the airspace ahead every few seconds, scanning from the surface to Flight Level 600, and automatically adjusting accurately for the Earth’s curvature and terrain. All the pilot needs to do is look at the screen. When automation may not be the best choice, reverting to manual tilt adjustment is also possible.

Information for Strategic Planning

One of the big advantages of onboard radar is that it is closer to real time than satellite weather, so pilots have a more accurate and realistic view of the short-range weather directly in the flight path for close-in tactical decision-making. Still, increasing the range of newer radars to 320 nm enhances early weather decision-making for the crew. In an age of satellite weather, some may question how much on board radar really needs to do in long-range mode. Isn’t long-range, strategic weather data available from external sources at much lower cost?

The first part of that answer is that the wider world is not as rich in satellite weather coverage as U.S. airspace is, and airliners and business jets frequently find themselves in geographic areas where onboard weather radar is their only source of information on hazardous conditions.

The second part of the answer is that onboard radar, now with more and more of the interpretive capability of the national system, is a real-time asset controllable from the cockpit. It offers more precise predictive analysis of the exact route of flight and applicable altitude for the individual aircraft. And of course, when it comes to tactical close-in views of weather on approach, there is no substitute for having precise weather data that is only seconds old.

The August demo flight showed journalists how the radar works, though restricted airspace around Washington, D.C., kept us at least 50 miles from the line of cells we were tracking. So much for the thrill of a “storm-chasing” mission. Still, it was a good opportunity to see the workings of the screens and how intuitive the display is. For pilots, it’s as effortless as looking at the screen.