Fleet Census - Orient Aviation

SPECIAL REPORT
Safety
Righting the wrong turns
How best to reduce the risk of runway incursions
It must be every pilot’s nightmare,
an attempted take-off from a wrong
runway and in two high-profile
cases the mistake proved fatal.
Last year 47 passengers died when
a Comair Bombardier CRJ-100 tried to get
airborne from a 1,000-metre strip used
solely by small, general aviation aircraft at
Lexington in Kentucky. It had been cleared
for take-off from one double the length.
Six years earlier, a Singapore Airlines
B747-400 hit construction equipment as its
wheels were leaving the ground after turning
on to a partially-closed runway at Chiang
Kai Shek International Airport in Taiwan.
Eighty-three passengers and crew died.
While it is too early to draw firm conclusions
from the Comair crash – it is still
being investigated by the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) – the Taiwan tragedy
has provided safety experts with pointers to
the way forward.
“There have been lots of lessons learned
from that one,” said David Gamper, director,
administrator, safety and technical, at
Airports Council International. “It’s far
too simplistic just to blame the pilot. That’s
what happened originally, but practically
everybody was at fault.”
There are a host of technological answers
to problems such as this and also for runway
incursions and other airside snafus that top
Gamper’s list of current concerns. But they
come at a price that many of the region’s
airports can’t afford.
Risks can be reduced by innovations such
as a multilateration sensor system that tracks
aircraft and vehicles on the tarmac, surface
movement radar, switchable lighting for stop
bars and taxiways to show aircraft the route
and a detection system that warns a controller
when an aircraft crosses over a lit stop bar.
But little of this is straightforward to
acquire. A fully up-to-date lighting system,
for instance, requires digging up the concrete
to lay complex wiring and then, after installation,
the training of control tower personnel
so they can make best use of it.
“It’s all good stuff, but it costs a lot of
‘It is bound to be a resource
problem. We are talking about
expensive improvements that
maybe you can’t put into a
small airport’
David Gamper
Director, Safety and Technical
Airports Council International
money,” said Gamper. “It is bound to be
a resource problem. We are talking about
expensive improvements that maybe you
can’t put into a small airport. It’s an issue in
Europe and the U.S. too; it’s not just confined
to the Asia-Pacific.”
In the final analysis, better procedures
can help all round and also lessen the risk
of taking off on the wrong runway. Gamper
has practical advice for those who don’t have
the money needed to buy the most up-to-date
systems.
“The best thing they can do is concentrate
on procedural improvements; phraseology,
air traffic control (ATC) language skills
and following International Civil Aviation
Organisation (ICAO) phraseology and
procedure all the time,” he said.
“Best of all is a system of giving take-off
clearances as late as possible so there is
no chance of mistaking a runway. In some
countries it is the practice to give an early
clearance, or a provisional clearance. That is
not as safe as delaying until the aircraft is just
before the runway. These things don’t cost
money, just the cost of the training.”
Gamper also advises airports to identify
hot spots. “You should document if there are
any problem areas where you seem to have
a number of incursions or other events, like
mistaken runways. Those should be very rare
events,” he said.
It’s a question of pulling together, it
seems. “Runway safety teams, which are
multi-disciplinary: the airlines, the air
traffic control authority, plus those on the
ribbon area, especially the drivers, they
should get together and discuss the problems.
Sometimes it needs a change in procedure,”
said Gamper.
A concentration on the problem of incursions
has brought results. “These are high
energy incidents when at least one aircraft
is travelling fast. We have put a lot of effort,
along with the rest of the industry, into
producing new guidelines,” he said
Eu rocont rol , t he FA A a nd t he
International Civil Aviation Organisation
36 ORIENT AVIATION APRIL 2007