NATS set to move on incursions
UK National Air Traffic Services (NATS) looks certain to push runway incursion prevention higher up its priorities list when its board has fully digested a draft report which reveals there have been 172 runway incursion reports in the past four years at the 14 UK airports where NATS is the air traffic service provider.
NATS says this means an occurrence is reported every two weeks - an incursion rate of one per 50,000 aircraft movements. But operations director Ian Hall says the potential severity of the consequences is the main motivator for accelerated action, not the incursion rate.
Total UK runway incursion figures from the Civil Aviation Authority show a remorselessly upward trend from 1996 to 2003.
The NATS study shows errors by pilots contribute to 63% of the incursions, errors by controllers to 21%, and by airside vehicle drivers to 16%. The most common causes are non-standard radio communications; inadequate or out-of-date documents, charts or procedures; or poor airport layout, markings and signage.
NATS looks likely to adopt a straight-talking policy, warning airlines or airports of errors or shortcomings. Hall admits that, until now, there has been a tendency to leave inadequate airport signage or surface markings to the airport to notice and sort out, and poor pilot radio telephony procedures to the airlines to detect and correct.
Source: Flight International
