Honeywell to Make Flying Safer by Decoding Accents in India

With more than 100 languages and the ambition to connect even its smallest villages by air, India has become a testing ground for a new software being developed by Honeywell International Inc. that aims to make it easier to understand pilots speaking English with strong local accents.

The conglomerate is, at the behest of the government, developing software that will decipher accents and automatically transcribe what’s said for air traffic controllers. The move will enhance safety at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to add smaller airports to the world’s fastest-growing major market has increased the demand for pilots who could be speaking in a thick accent, thanks to more than 6,000-old dialects spoken across the country.