FAA 'Slow' To Address Runway Incursion Issue

JAMES T. McKENNA

WASHINGTON

The FAA has failed to reverse the rising incidence of near-collisions on airport runways and has little money budgeted for measures to reach its goal of slashing the number of so-called runway incursions by next year, a government watchdog has found.

The agency adopted plans to reduce runway incursions in 1991, 1995 and again in October of last year, a July 27 report by the Transportation Dept.'s inspector general (IG) found. Yet the number and the rate of incursions, in which an aircraft, vehicle or person strays on to a runway being used by a departing or landing flight, has risen steadily since 1993.

In 1998, the report said, incursions totaled 325, an 11.3% increase over the 292 reported for 1997. Last year, the IG said, the rate of incursions equaled 0.52 per 100,000 airport operations, or landings and takeoffs, compared to 0.47 per 100,000 operations in 1997.

"Runway incursions continue to be a serious problem in 1999," the report said, noting that FAA data show 149 occurred in the year's first half, compared to 150 for the first six months of 1998. On Apr. 1, for instance, a Korean Air 747 with more than 360 people on board flew over the nose of an Air China 747 freighter that had taxied onto the active runway at Chicago O'Hare Airport, clearing the cargo aircraft by 25-50 ft. On June 28, an Air France 747 freighter crossed the active runway at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport while an Icelandair 757 was departing.

The FAA is addressing most of the inspector general's recommendations to fix the runway-incursion problem, the report noted. The IG called for higher level direction from FAA officials on the problem, for instance. On June 4, the report said, Administrator Jane F. Garvey held the first of planned monthly incursion meetings with her associate administrators. The agency on June 30 corrected a flaw cited by the IG by issuing standard operation procedures for its Runway Safety Program.

The report also noted that the FAA in March identified short-term initiatives to help reduce incursions immediately. These include advising airports on means of correcting incursion problems and having FAA officials conduct mandatory monthly meetings with ATC managers, airport authorities and aircraft operators.

In 1998, 13 incursions were reported at Los Angeles International Airport, the IG said. Eight each were reported for Lambert-St. Louis International and Newark International. Seven occurred at Phoenix Sky Harbor International and six each at Cleveland-Hopkins International and Detroit Metropolitan. Anchorage International, Dallas/Fort Worth International, Indianapolis International and Las Vegas McCarran International each had five.

With two exceptions, more incursions occurred at those airports in 1998 than 1997. Cleveland's 1997 incursion total was six, the same as last year. DFW had three fewer incursions than in 1997.

Still, the report said, "the FAA's progress in reducing runway incursions has been too slow."

Of 23 actions slated in the 1998 plan for completion by January, the IG found, only eight were done. The remaining 15, including an item to develop "surface incident prevention plans" for individual airports, are at least five months behind schedule. Some action items, such as reducing radio frequency congestion and improving airport lighting and aircraft conspicuity, are about a year behind schedule.

The FAA's incursion-reduction efforts have two major problems remaining, the report said. The agency has little money designated for those efforts and new equipment designed to help prevent incursions is suffering development problems and installation delays.

"The FAA has only identified limited funds to support" the 1998 plan, the IG found, "and has yet to establish a budget for Fiscal 2000" to complete its initiatives.

This fiscal year's FAA budget includes no funds for the plan, the report said, because the budget was drafted in March 1997, 18 months before the plan was completed. The FAA Office of Research and Acquisition's facilities and equipment funds has allocated $200,000 to support the runway safety program. The agency's air traffic operations and runway safety program provided $55,000 for travel to airports with high numbers of incursions.

The agency's runway safety program officials "estimated that at least $7.9 million is needed to complete initiatives" in the 1998 plan, the report said. The agency has no funds budgeted in Fiscal 2000 to support the plan, "but has included $3 million in operating funds" to support the initiatives set for completion in that fiscal year.

The FAA is developing the Airport Movement Area Safety System (Amass) to help air traffic controllers head off runway incursions. An enhancement to the Airport Surface Detection Equipment 3 (ASDE-3) radar, it is designed to identify aircraft on an airport's surface and to identify potential conflicts. The system is installed and undergoing testing in Detroit, St. Louis and Atlanta, the IG said.

The Amass contract was awarded in September 1990. In 1993, the cost to develop and field 40 Amass units at 34 airports by 1996 was estimated at $59.8 million. By late last year, that cost was put at $89.8 million, the inspector general's report said, and the FAA continues to experience developmental problems. Now, the last Amass unit is not scheduled for delivery until August 2000. Software and human-factors problems have slowed its installation, but the IG noted other problems with the FAA's plans for Amass.

The agency plans to initially limit Amass' use to monitoring for conflicts only on active runways. "Controllers will not be alerted to potential conflicts that involve traffic on runways or taxiways that intersect the active runways," the report said. A key concern is that Amass false alarms would distract tower controllers. "The primary problem is that Amass has difficulty in differentiating between actual collision hazards and normal operations at runway intersections."

A software patch being tested in Atlanta shows promise for reducing the false-alarm rate, the IG said.

Another problem, the report noted, is that the ASDE-3 radar system on which Amass is based "has not met the 24-hr.-a-day, seven-days-a-week availability requirements for Amass." Achieving that availability would require an additional $16.5 million in Fiscal 2001-03. "Also, ASDE-3 performs poorly in heavy rain, a prime period of low visibility when the system is needed most."

Runway Incursion Kills
118 at Milan-Linate

JENS FLOTTAU/MUNICH

Business jet takes wrong taxiway in foggy conditions. Ground radar equipment is not operating.

Lack of situational awareness was believed, as of late last week, to be the most likely cause of the runway incursion accident at Milan's Linate airport, resulting in the crash of a Cessna Citation CJ2 business jet and an SAS Scandinavian Airlines MD-87--killing all 114 on both aircraft and four on the ground.

Ground control cleared the Cessna Citation from the west apron to taxiway R5, but in conditions of approximately 300-ft. visibility it went along R6 onto the runway.

The accident occurred on Oct. 8, at 8:10 a.m. Central European Time, in heavy fog. The Citation mistakenly taxied onto the active runway on which the SAS MD-87 accelerated for take-off as flight SK686 bound for Copenhagen. The MD-87 hit the business jet during rotation with the front gear already in the air. While the Citation was completely destroyed at the site of the impact, the airliner skidded along the runway and veered slightly to the right, eventually crashing into a baggage hangar next to the main apron. The accident could well have ended in an even worse disaster had the aircraft swerved off a few degrees farther to the right, onto the main apron and into the main terminal.

Investigations have focused on why the Cessna pilot took the wrong taxiway. According to the German accident investigation board Flugunfalluntersuchungsstelle, the Citation registered as D-JEVX was parked on the west apron used by general-aviation aircraft. It had taken off from Cologne, Germany, at 5:54 a.m. CET, for the flight to Milan--where the owner, a German corporate aircraft provider, wanted to demonstrate the Citation to a potential buyer, Luca Fossati, chairman of the Italian food company Star. The crew had filed a flight plan for a Linate-Paris Le Bourget flight. Cessna's Citation regional sales manager, Stefano Romanello, was killed on board the aircraft. Cessna was not able to confirm late last week if he was the pilot in command.

According to Gerardo d'Ambrosio, Milan chief prosecutor, the Cessna pilot was cleared onto taxiway R5, which passes along the northern airport perimeter and does not cross any of Linate's two runways. R6, which was used by the Citation, actually ends on runway 18L/36R and is not continued on the opposite side of the runways. To make a shortcut across, it would have had to leave the runway slightly to the south on taxiway R2. This is common procedure, according to a pilot who flies into Linate frequently. At the end of R6, a red light should have indicated that the runway was active and should not be crossed. The pilot noted that R6 is heading roughly in the same direction as R5, has two curves and a total of three passing bays, so it would have been easy to lose situational awareness in the fog. However, in low-visibility conditions, aircraft are prohibited from crossing 18L/36R, the Milan Airline Operator Committee said, and are forced to taxi the long way--via R5.

The Cessna pilot correctly read back the clearance for R5, according to ENAV, the Italian flight-controllers association. "It is true there has been a human error. But we need to go all the way to see what may have had an influence on this error," Chief Prosecutor d'Ambrosio said.

Air traffic controllers could not track the Cessna's taxi path since Linate's ground radar was not operational and is not expected to be turned on until the end of the year. The fact that the radar has not been in use over months has drawn fierce criticism from the Italian public. According to people familiar with the situation, ENAV had urged several times that repairs should be implemented quickly. "There are many questions surrounding the possible role that the lack of an operative ground radar may have played," SAS said.

SAS cautioned, however, that ground radar was "just one of a number of means to maintain safety." The airline pointed out that it operates to airports both with and without the equipment. In Sweden, only Arlanda and Landvetter are equipped with ground radar.

Weather conditions at the time of the accident were extremely difficult. At 7:50 a.m.--25 min. prior to the crash--visibility in fog was at 50 meters (164 ft.) with the runway visual range (RVR) for 36R at 250 meters variable to 600 meters. At 8:20 a.m.--5 min. after the crash--visibility had only slightly improved to 100 meters with RVR at 225 meters and the sky overcast at 100 ft.

SK686 was scheduled to leave for Copenhagen at 7:35 a.m., but was delayed by 45 min., with 104 passengers on board. The crew included 36-year-old Capt. Joakim Gustafson, who has flown for SAS since 1987 and has accumulated 5,624 hr. His first officer was Anders Hyllander, age 36, who had 2,370 hr. There were also four cabin crew on board. SAS stressed that the aircraft had received take-off clearance for runway 36R, which is 2,440 meters long. The aircraft needed a ground roll of approximately 1,200 meters until rotation. SE-DMA was delivered to SAS on Sept. 21, 1991, and had accumulated 16,562 cycles over 25,573 hr. The last major check, a B-check, was performed on Sept. 3, 2001.

Milan's Linate is mostly used for intra-Italian shuttle flights to Rome, but has some service to European destinations--following a bitter dispute between European carriers and Italian authorities who were trying to force all operators, except Alitalia, to use Malpensa. Linate is a popular airport with business travelers as it is only 7 km. from Milan's center. The airport remained closed until Oct. 10, two days after the crash. SAS said it would only operate to Malpensa until the end of the week.

SAS has not had a fatal crash since January 1969, when a DC-8 crashed near Los Angeles, killing 15 people. In a spectacular emergency landing on Dec. 27, 1991, an SAS MD-81 broke up in a field near Stockholm-Arlanda airport after both engines had failed. There were no fatalities in the crash.

See Also:

NTSB Moves To Stem Runway Incursions

FAA Slow To Address Runway Incursion Issue

How Can U.S. Reduce Runway Incursions

How Can U.S. Reduce
Runway Incursions?

FRANCES FIORINO/NEW YORK and
SEAN BRODERICK/WASHINGTON

A troubling factor remains: In spite of major FAA efforts
to reduce collision hazards, incidents continue to climb

Regulators and industry leaders converge on Washington this week to grapple, yet again, with what is perhaps the U.S.' No. 1 aviation safety issue--runway incursions--at the FAA's Runway Safety National Summit. Their mission: to determine why incursion incidents are continuing unabated and find plausible solutions in making the runway environment a less hostile, user-friendly place for pilots, air traffic controllers and passengers.

BUT SO FAR, attempts have failed. A runway incursion is "any occurrence at an airport that involves an aircraft vehicle, person or object on the ground that creates a collision hazard or results in loss of separation with an aircraft taking off, intending to take off, landing or intending to land." The most stunning case is the 1977 runway collision of Pan Am and KLM Boeing 747s at Tenerife, Canary Islands, in which 582 people died--the worst accident in commercial aviation history.

The FAA's 1997 goal of cutting incursions to 41 by 2001 long ago fizzled. FAA Administrator Jane F. Garvey in mid-1999 made reduction of runway incursions the agency's No. 1 priority. In October 1999, the agency set up a National Runway Safety Program, with a goal of trimming incursions to 248 this year--a tall order, considering current data show a consistent increase in traffic combined with a 75% jump in incursions from 186 in 1993 to 327 in 1999. The FAA recorded 178 incursions through mid-June, an 18% increase compared to 146 for the same period in 1999. Incursions are the result of "operational error" (mistakes made by air traffic control), "pilot deviation" (mistakes made by cockpit crew), and "vehicle or pedestrian deviations" (those made by grounds personnel/vehicles operating on the airport surface).

Proposed runway-incursion warning technologies, such as the FAA's now-delayed Airport Movement Area Safety System (Amass), have yet to emerge, and continued recommendations by the NTSB have yielded few results.

While the FAA gathered input from the nine regional summits and 1,000 runway incursion seminars it conducted this year, the safety board offered its latest round of recommendations.

One set issued on June 13 stressed the need for the installation at all airports offering scheduled passenger service of a predictive ground safety system that would directly warn flight crews of possible collisions. In addition, the board recommended changing multiple-runway crossing clearance procedures and asked for the elimination of "position and hold" clearances on an active runway at night or in low visibility conditions ( AW&ST June 19, p. 24).

NTSB's second set of recommendations, issued June 16, propose:

• A review of intersecting runway operations at all airports served by scheduled carriers.
• Extending the spacing standard used to separate converging arrivals and departures to a distance greater than 2 mi. (see p. 72).
• Requiring controllers to provide traffic advisories to each flight crew of aircraft operating on intersecting runways when their flight-paths converge.
• Formal evaluation of reported safety-related events for air traffic control deficiencies in performance, and assigning responsibility for classification of such events occurring within the National Airspace System to an independent oversight function independent of the Air Traffic Service.
• Requiring preliminary Near Midair Collision (NMAC) reports to include a section describing ATC actions relevant to the incident, as well as requiring a controller to formally ask a flight crew concerned about the proximity of another aircraft if it wishes to file a formal NMAC report.
• Requiring ATC facilities to keep recorded voice communications and radar data for 45 days as well as requiring all telephone conversations with ATC facilities related to an accident, incident or ATC performance to be conducted on recorded telephone lines.

Runway incursion is "an enormously complex issue," says FAA runway safety program director John Mayrhofer. "It's made more complex by variable factors like visibility, weather and technology both on the ground and in the cockpit."

Many are human-factors related.

Take, for instance, an airport with high-density traffic. The environment requires the rapid-fire issuance of landing/departure instructions from controllers who are trying to sequence and separate traffic of all sizes and speeds. Lightning responses are required of often fatigued flight crews who must simultaneously maneuver the aircraft, review instrument procedures or a taxi diagram, and talk to equally fatigued controllers--or at least try to--on congested frequencies.

"WE ARE ASKING A LOT of the human being--the problem is multitasking," said Frank Tullo, a retired airline captain, human factors specialist and former chairman of the Air Transport Assn. Human Factors Committee. He added, "I never felt nervous when I was flying--it was when I was on the ground that I felt the most in jeopardy."

Tullo, who was instrumental in the development of cockpit resource management in the early 1980s, believes any real improvement of the incursion situation rests in the ability to reduce the number of multiple tasks required of both pilots and controllers. The higher the number of tasks, the higher the margin for error--the higher the margin for loss of situational awareness, the higher the risk of an accident.

On the tower side, a Flight Safety Foundation experimental study of U.S. air traffic controllers found those who napped for 45-120 min. during a simulated work shift exhibited greater alertness and better ability to complete tasks.

On the cockpit side, Tullo suggests that the ability to obtain clearances at the gate might free the crew to better concentrate on maneuvering the aircraft during taxi to the runway, rather than follow the common, and distracting, talk-to-ATC-and-taxi procedure. It would also help alleviate the logjam of aircraft waiting on the taxiway for clearances.

FREQUENTLY, PILOTS FLY with crewmembers they don't know into highly congested airports where they may be operating for the first time. Several flight crewmembers say that better-lit, better-placed airport signs may also help eliminate some crew confusion about their aircraft's position on the airport.

Tullo believes taxi markings in the U.S. are excellent, although he says runway markings could be bigger and their design made sharply distinctive from other airport directional signs.

Another observer says the arrows on U.S. taxiway signs appear ambiguous when seen from the high-off-the ground cockpit of a Boeing 747. Often, he said, "when I arrive at an unfamiliar airport I feel as though I'm sticking my head into a loaded shotgun."

Progressive taxi lighting, such as is installed at London Heathrow, has also been suggested by several industry observers as an aid to pilots. Green lights outline the taxi route to the active runway for the pilot; red bars at runway crossings require a stop. This helps eliminate "blundering" onto an active runway.

Improved communications among all involved in operations plays a big role. "We can't create an error-free human being. We should do anything we can to improve communications," urged Tullo.

According to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, a large number of reported errors are communications-related.

Use of standard phraseology could also help, particularly when flying into areas of the world where varied use of aeronautical terms or their pronunciation can often be misinterpreted by both flight crew and ATC, adding to confusion, and possibly leading to disaster.

Reliable ground collision warning systems are a necessity, such as Airport Surface Detection Equipment (ASDE-3) radar being developed by the FAA (AW&ST Aug. 2, 1999, p. 24). But few have come close to nearing operational readiness.

A system that would simultaneously inform both ATC and pilots of potential incursions is in development by the Rannoch Corp. The two-element system consists of ground infrastructure and an aircraft avionics unit. A surface trial of the avionics system installed in a Boeing 757 is scheduled in October at Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

A spokesperson for the Air Line Pilots Assn. said it is awaiting "real, not artificial, solutions" to be proposed by the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) before the end of the year. Team representatives from government and ATC user groups have been engaged in extensive probing of the causes of and cures for runway incursions ( AW&ST Jan. 31, p. 26).

Overall improvements in runway safety call for a two-pronged approach, according to the FAA. "We're developing very specific action plans that address local needs and incorporate our national efforts," Garvey said.

THE AGENCY EXPECTS local airports and representatives from user groups to meet on a regular basis to exchange safety data. Runway incursion action teams would be dispatched to trouble areas to conduct detailed inspections and analysis, Mayrhofer said. "The focus is going to be on education, training and awareness, with strong emphasis on human factors."

The runway incursion problem appears endemic to the U.S. Such events are a rare occurrence in Europe and not considered a major threat to safety. Nor are they necessarily linked to heavy traffic, bad weather conditions or scarce runway capacity at peak hours.

A night-time incident at Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport on May 25, however, is considered by European flight safety experts as a wakeup call. A taxiing Shorts 360 twin turboprop entered an active runway as an MD-83 on the takeoff roll reached V1 speed. The MD-83's left wing impacted the all-cargo 360, but the twinjet's pilot-in-command was able to keep the aircraft on the runway and abort the takeoff. A 360 flight crewmember was killed, but there were no injuries among the MD-83's 151 passengers and crew.

Although the investigation team has not determined the causes of the incursion, it is focusing on ATC procedures and radio transmissions that preceded the accident.

The results of this week's summit are uncertain. What the world aviation community needs, however, is very certain. As one official said, "We require concrete results--resolutions that are fast, cheap and easy, not slow, expensive and difficult to use."

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