An airborne remote sensor named GASPILS (gas pipeline leak sensor) has been developed and tested to detect leaks from natural gas pipelines by monitoring the amount of methane in the atmosphere above the leak. The sensor is a passive electro‐optical system, with two independent channels, operating in a downward‐looking profiling mode. It is designed to detect increases in the low levels of methane concentration by sensing the infrared spectral radiance signatures using a nondispersive gas filter correlation technique. This technique involves the use of a gas cell as a matched spectral filter, and it combines a high degree of sensitivity to the target gas with a high degree of specificity.