In its drive to raise runway incursion prevention awareness, the UK Civil Aviation Authority's flight operations department has produced a communication notice which bundles advice and reminders on operating procedures at or near airfields.
The document (FODCOM25) is part of a long-running CAA project to increase awareness of the dangers of runway incursions and is part of a wider initiative that also involves UK National Air Traffic Services and Eurocontrol (Flight International, 26 October-1 November).
The CAA says the new document draws together information from a number of sources to remind airport operators and flightcrews of the procedures and phraseology that they should be using to help reduce the number of incursions. "It is a part of the much bigger CAA project also covering air traffic control, airside drivers and airport management," says the authority. Overseen by the UK Runway Incursion Steering Group, the "drip-feed" awareness campaign recently saw a series of poster campaigns, the current focus of which is on airside driver safety.
The first section of the new document, covering flightcrew best practice, has been drawn together from a number of sources. It comprises advice and reminders about taxiing operations covering issues such as planning, briefings, cross-monitoring of clearances, observance of standard operating procedures (SOP), use of logo lights to increase visibility, and the adoption of a sterile flightdeck while manoeuvring on the ground.
A second component covers radiotelephony (RT) phraseology and procedures, which the CAA says has been taken straight from the existing CAP413 RT document. Issues covered include differences between phraseology in different states, conditional clearances (ie where an instruction becomes valid after another event has occurred), observance of SOPs, read-back requirements, taxi instructions (such as different uses of "hold short"), pre-departure manoeuvring and runway vacating.
MAX KINGSLEY-JONES / LONDON
Source: Flight International
