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Easyjet flight coming into Geneva, Saleve in the background

London, England (GenevaLunch) – EasyJet, one of the airlines hardest hit by ash cloud bans, has come up with a detector that could allow pilots to spot too much ash and change course. Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority says it is “happy an airline appeared to have found a technical solution, and, although it was not endorsing the product, it would do what it could to help certification,” reports the BBC.

The new system, called Avoid, for Airborne Volcanic Object Identifier and Detector, is described in a press release issued Friday 4 June by easyJet:

The system, essentially a weather radar for ash, was created by Dr Fred Prata of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU). AVOID is a system that involves placing infrared technology onto an aircraft to supply images to both the pilots and an airline’s flight control centre.

These images will enable pilots to see an ash cloud up to 100 km ahead of the aircraft and at altitudes between 5,000ft and 50,000ft. This will allow pilots to make adjustments to the plane’s flight path to avoid any ash cloud. The concept is very similar to weather radars which are standard on commercial airliners today.

EasyJet is Geneva’s top airline in terms of passenger traffic.