What is TAWS?
The FAA has mandated that all US registered, turbine powered aircraft with six or more seats must install a Terrain Awareness and Warning System (TAWS) by March 5, 2005. TAWS is a new enhanced technology that replaces earlier Ground Proximity Warning Systems (GPWS). TAWS uses position data from a navigation system such as GPS and a digital terrain database to display surrounding terrain. Most modern mutli function displays have capabilities to interface and display terrain information overlaid with GPS position information and other types of information. The enhanced TAWS adds two new and critical capabilities, FLTA (forward looking terrain avoidance) and PDA (premature decent alerts) to the standard GPWS capabilities of excessive rate of descent, excessive closure rate to terrain, altitude loss after takeoff, negative climb rate, flight into terrain when not in landing configuration, and excessive downward deviation from glideslope. The FAA believes that TAWS can significantly help to
