MILAN, Italy (AP)- “An SAS airliner taking off for Denmark hit a private jet that wandered across the runway, then careened into an airport building in a fiery crash that killed all 114 people on both planes and four people on the ground Monday. It was Italy's worst aviation disaster.”
Citing an ongoing investigation of an incident in which a 767 landed on a taxiway in Atlanta in October, Hersman said that the NTSB took a strong interest in the event "because we want to know what led a professional flight crew to mistake a taxiway for a runway, whether the controllers could have detected the misaligned final approach to landing and intervened, and whether there are technological tools that can be used to prevent such incidents from ever occurring in the first place." Although no one was injured in the incident, Hersman said that "if this event had resulted in a fatal collision, there would be - far and wide - immediate and understandable calls for changes."
Hersman also cited human fatigue as an area that the Safety Board has become particularly focused on, saying that "We are seeing fatigue as a causal or contributing factor in numerous accidents across all transportation modes." The NTSB has made recommendations to the FAA to set working hour limits for flight crews, aviation mechanics, and air traffic controllers, and has asked the FAA develop a fatigue awareness and countermeasures training program for controllers and those who schedule them for duty. Recently, NATCA and the FAA established a working group to collaboratively address the human fatigue issues that the NTSB has identified. Hersman noted the significance of this positive step by the leadership of both organizations and called it a very encouraging development.
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Takeoff clearance despite vehicle on runwayA Ryanair Boeing 737-800, registration EI-EBE performing flight FR-9844 from Cork to Dublin (Ireland) with 164 passengers and 6 crew, was cleared for takeoff from Cork's runway 17. When the aircraft began its takeoff roll, a police car holding on runway 17 short of runway 07/25 recognized the conflict and accelerated to vacate runway 17 onto runway 07/25. While the Boeing accelerated through 90 knots the Ryanair crew spotted the car already disappearing onto runway 07/25 and clear of runway 17, so that they continued the takeoff. The Boeing reached Dublin for a safe landing.
Runway Safety Training - Simulation ..
Aer Lingus A330 and US Air B737 (animation)
The Tenerife Disaster (video + text)
Runway Incursion (video)
Don't worry! Would you worry?
Direct warnings to pilots seen as key to eliminating incursions (text)Thursday December 3, 2009 Aviation safety experts tout a number of measures taken in recent years that have helped to mitigate the risk of runway incursions--better signage and lighting, improved training and ATC alerting systems such as AMASS--but say developing and deploying technology that enables pilots to receive direct warnings is critical if the ever-present danger of airfield collisions is to be eliminated. "If we're trying to prevent runway incursions by relying on something outside the cockpit, we're not going to achieve what we want to," US National Transportation Safety Board Member Robert Sumwalt said this week at the FAA International Runway Safety Summit in Washington (ATWOnline, Dec. 2) "We need to put something in the cockpit." NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman noted that AMASS, which tracks runway surface and airborne movements on a 1-sec. update cycle to warn controllers of potential incursions, requires a controller to receive an alert and then relay a warning to pilots, a process that can take too long if aircraft are moving toward one another at high speeds. Sumwalt claimed NTSB studies have indicated that "43% of runway incursions could be eliminated with a [GPS-enabled] cockpit moving map with own ship position." FAA has said it is earmarking $5 million to provide funding assistance to airlines that agree to equip cockpits with EFBs that include moving map displays. Hersman said that while the program is "commendable," it is voluntary and the level of funding is relatively low. "As a result, the program is not likely to result in widespread adoption of moving map technology," she commented. Jern Dunn, group customer account manager for the UK's National Air Traffic Services, agreed that "the final difference [in reducing incursions] will be made with the final piece of technology. . .a warning signal needs to go [directly] to the pilot." "There's not any one magic bullet" to eliminate incursions, Sumwalt explained. "We need to have a number of layers of defense to increase runway safety. . .Cockpit technology is one very important layer of defense" and has been the "final layer" in significantly mitigating other aviation safety risks, he said, citing the example of TCAS immediately alerting pilots to potential midair collisions. by Aaron Karp See the original on ATW Daily News
NTSB CHAIRMAN HIGHLIGHTS RUNWAY SAFETY AND HUMAN FATIGUE IN ADDRESS TO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS
Hersman chaired the NTSB's February meeting in which runway safety was again voted onto its Most Wanted List of Safety Improvements where it has been since its inception in 1990. The Safety Board's recommendations to the FAA includes providing immediate warnings of probable collisions and incursions directly to flight crews in the cockpit; requiring specific ATC clearance for each runway crossing; requiring operators to install cockpit moving map displays or an automatic system that alerts pilots when a takeoff is attempted on a taxiway or a runway other than the one intended; and requiring a landing distance assessment with an adequate safety margin for every landing.
Concluding with an invitation for air traffic controllers to participate in a three-day forum on pilot and controller excellence that the NTSB will be holding in Washington in May, Hersman emphasized the value of learning from the numerous examples of superior job performance by controllers. "Through our work we are very good at finding out what went wrong, but frankly, it is just as important to know what is going right, because we want to replicate that throughout the entire national airspace system," she said." The complete text of Chairman Hersman's speech may be obtained on the NTSB website. Fly Smart, Kent Taken from Signal Charlie
Wildlife on RunwaysTurtles on JFK runway cause flight delaysfrom Turtles on JFK runway cause flight delays By BILL SANDERSON Get the shell out of the way!
Sex-crazed turtles shut down a runway at Kennedy Airport this morning as they crawled across the tarmac heading for their seasonal breeding grounds. Runway 4L was shut down starting about 9:30 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said. Port Authority workers were still working an hour later to move the slowpokes to safer ground.
"We may have a few delays, but nothing significant," said FAA spokeswoman Arlene Salac. JetBlue reported the turtle incursion on Twitter around 9:40 a.m. "Running over turtles is not healthy for them nor is it good for our tires," the airline said. “Be advised 30 feet into the takeoff roll, left side of the centerline, there’s another turtle,” called the pilot of American Airlines Flight 1009, a Boeing 767 that had just taken off for the Dominican Republic. “There’s another one on the runway?” asked the controller. “Uh, well he was there,” the pilot said as the plane climbed into the air. Turtles also delayed several flights earlier this week. The turtle invasion is an annual event at Kennedy. They're in the middle of their spawning season, when the females crawl out of Jamaica Bay onto the runway in search of higher ground to lay their eggs. "The sandy spot on the other side of Runway 4L is ideal for egg laying," PA spokesman John Kelly said. "It is a naturally provided turtle maternity ward. When your airport is virtually surrounded by water, your neighbors sometimes come in the hard shell variety." In July 2009, a runway at JFK was shut down briefly after at least 78 turtles emerged from nearby Jamaica Bay and crawled onto the tarmac. Ground crews eventually rounded up the reptiles and deposited them back in the water, but not before the incident disrupted JFK's flight schedule and contributed to delays that reached nearly two hours.
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Flamingo, turtles and othersWildlife Hazards at Airports
Reported in The Sun A flamingo caused havoc at Manchester airport last week when a runway had to be shut down while he was shooed away. Here are the top ten animal airport interruptions from privatefly.com
Taken from Signal Charlie
Safer Flights, but Risk Lurks on the Runway
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Southwest Airways Flight 844 from Minneapolis had just landed at Chicago’s Midway International Airport last December and was about to cross a runway on its way to the terminal when the co-pilot noticed a business jet barreling toward him. He shouted for the captain to stop. The plane, carrying 74 passengers, screeched to a halt just short of the runway as the smaller jet crossed before their eyes.
Monica Almeida/The New York TimesA service road at the Los Angeles Airport. Airplanes are not the only things trying to get from place to place on the tarmac.
Seconds later, the Southwest pilot called the control tower. “I want you to acknowledge you cleared us on a runway while a plane was taking off,” he said. “We had to hit the brakes and the thing went right over our head.” Though most passengers may not be aware of the hazards on the ground, such near misses are not isolated events. Since 2008, there have been about three incidents a day in which a plane or a vehicle gets on an active runway by mistake, an average of 1,000 a year. That number has held steady for the last four years while the total number of flights has declined. In a small number of these cases, a catastrophic collision is narrowly avoided — sometimes only through sheer luck. The issue has festered even as regulators and the airline industry have made significant gains in reducing other major aviation hazards, especially those in flight. Advances in navigation technology in recent decades, for instance, have sharply reduced midair collisions and crashes into mountains and other obstacles, two of the most common causes of accidents. But a similar urgency to address runway safety has lagged, safety experts said. Only in the last year have all 35 major airports installed new ground radars that provide air-traffic controllers a better view of the runways, and a handful of airports are now testing a new system of warning lights on runways. “These incidents remind us how vulnerable we are when procedures or people fail,” said Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, which has put runway safety on its top 10 list of priorities since 1990. The Federal Aviation Administration said the number of runway incidents that it classifies as most severe — in which a collision is narrowly avoided — has dropped in the last decade. In 2000, there were 67 serious incidents, only half involving a commercial aircraft, compared with just 12 in 2011. Still, the Government Accountability Office, an auditing arm of Congress, said there were 18 incidents per million flights in 2010, up from 11 per million in 2004. The safety board said about a dozen incidents are serious enough to warrant an investigation each year. Airports, particularly major hubs, are busy places that can handle more than a hundred flights an hour, while thousands of fuel trucks, bag tugs, catering trucks and many other vehicles crisscross the airfield. Most incidents involve jets, but there have also been cases where fire trucks, helicopters, animal control vehicles, police cars and even pedestrians, cross runways by mistake in recent years. In one instance, a Boeing 767 landing at Honolulu International Airport in 2009 was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid striking an F-15 fighter jet that had stopped on the runway. The pilot realized there was an obstacle only when he saw the F-15’s tailpipes and stopped 200 feet from the fighter. In 65 percent of cases, pilots are blamed, according to the F.A.A. In a few extreme cases, pilots have landed on a taxiway. In 2009, for instance, a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767 coming from Rio de Janeiro mistook a taxiway for a runway at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Hazards on runways are likely to increase with the expansion of air traffic in coming decades, said James M. Burin, the director of technical programs at the Flight Safety Foundation, an aviation consulting firm. “Congestion is really starting to become an issue, and with that, the risks of planes’ colliding with each other,” Mr. Burin said. A runway incursion in 1977 caused the deadliest accident in aviation history, when two Boeing 747s — a PanAm flight and a Royal Dutch KLM flight — collided on a runway at Tenerife Airport in the Canary Islands, killing 583 people. In 1991, a US Airways Boeing 737 landing at Los Angeles International Airport collided with a commuter jet that was about to take off. Thirty-four people died. The last fatal accident involving a commercial aircraft and a runway incursion in the United States occurred in 1996, in Quincy, Ill., when a commuter plane and a private plane collided at crisscrossing runways, killing 14 people. After a series of close calls, the biggest pilot union, the Air Line Pilots Association, warned in 2007 that “the risk of a runway incursion event that could kill hundreds of people in a single accident is real and growing larger.” That year, the F.A.A. bolstered its runway safety program. It required airports to install more explicit signs to better mark runways and taxiways, and expanded the use of ground radar systems, called ASDE-X. These give air traffic controllers a real-time picture of where airplanes are on the airfield and an alarm in the event of a potential problem. Two years ago, the F.A.A. changed its runway procedures, requiring pilots cleared to proceed on taxiways to also get explicit approval from the tower before crossing a runway. The F.A.A. is also testing a new system at Los Angeles International Airport and a handful of other airports called Runway Status Lights, which uses red warning lights embedded in runways and taxiways that automatically turn on when a runway is being used. The F.A.A. aims to have the system at 23 airports by 2016. The Transportation Department’s inspector general also questioned the F.A.A.’s reporting of incidents, describing the rating process in a July 2010 review as “inconsistent, subjective, and potentially susceptible to bias, making the accuracy of year-to-year comparisons of serious accidents questionable.” In the case of the Southwest flight at Midway last December, because the F.A.A. determined that the Southwest plane had “ample time” to stop, the incident was classified as a category C, less serious than a category A, defined as “an incident where a collision was narrowly avoided,” or B, “an incident in which separation decreases and there is significant potential for collision.” Read the complete article and access a few links on The New York Times
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