The risk of runway incursions at U.S. airports remains high despite concerted effort by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to reduce the air safety risk, FAA and government investigators testified last week.
The General Accountability Office’s Gerald Dillingham told a House panel that even though the FAA has given a higher priority to reducing runway incidents, there were 24 of the most serious kinds of runway incursions in fiscal year 2008, which ended Sept. 30. That’s the same number of serious runway incursions in FY2007. But the rate of serious incursions increased by five percent during the fiscal year.
The GAO noted that the FAA’s latest actions to improve runway safety include deployment and test of new technologies and changes to airport layout, markings, signage and lighting. The FAA has also implemented new air traffic procedures.
Dillingham said the FAA could further improve runway safety by “ensuring the timely deployment of technology, encouraging the development of new technology, and increasing its focus on human factor issues.” The GAO backs deployment of runway status lights (RSLs) at 22 major airports and development of incursion warning systems in the cockpit.
FAA Chief Operating Officer Hank Krakowski said the agency has made “solid progress” this year, noting that the 24 serious incidents in 2007 were down from a high of 53 incidents in 2001.
“FAA believes that the technologies we are now testing and deploying will be responsive to address the problem of runway incursions,” he stated. Krakowski said 65 percent of runway incursions in 2008 were due to pilot error, while 25 percent was blamed on vehicle/pedestrian error and 10 percent was caused by controller error.
The FAA is testing a system at Long Beach Airport, known as the Final Approach Runway Occupancy Signal (FAROS), which will further enhance runway safety. This system is similar to RSLs in that it provides immediate information to pilots on approach to land that the runway is occupied or otherwise unsafe for landing.
The FAROS system determines the occupancy of the runway by detecting aircraft or vehicles on the runway surface. If a monitored area on the runway is occupied, FAROS activates a signal to alert the pilot that it is potentially unsafe to land. The FAA is developing a plan for implementing FAROS at larger airports, and expect to begin operational trials at Dallas-Fort Worth later this fall.
Meanwhile, the FAA is also evaluating low-cost ground surveillance systems for potential application at airports that are currently not programmed to receive ASDE-X technology.
The FAA has evaluated two such systems at Spokane, WA, and Krakowski believes that “basic ground surveillance capability, increasing controller situational awareness, can be provided at a cost less than the more sophisticated ASDE-X technology that is needed at larger, more complex airports.”
The FAA has issued a request for proposal inviting industry offers of candidate low-cost ground surveillance products for FAA evaluation in a pilot program to determine which products satisfy minimum operational and safety requirements. “We will use the results of the pilot project to determine the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of implementing a low-cost surveillance product, and if deemed feasible, develop a plan for acquisition and deployment. Several industry offers are currently under review and we expect to complete our evaluations in the near future,” he told the lawmakers.
Recently the FAA conducted its first-ever symposium on fatigue, which has caused runway incursions. “We are preparing the proceedings of the Fatigue Symposium for posting on the FAA homepage. We have already applied some of the information, ideas and strategies in its evaluation of air carrier-specific proposals for ultra long range (ULR) operations (operations with a flight or flights in excess of 16 hours). The FAA is observing the effectiveness of the fatigue mitigation strategies employed in ULR operations, for any “lessons learned” that may be applied to other, non-ULR operations,” Krakowski testified.