Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Increase in runway ‘incursions’ a concern for Canadian air authorities

OTTAWA — The pilot of a single-engine Cessna airplane preparing to depart the Ottawa airport two years ago was instructed to taxi to runway 32 and “hold short” while two arriving aircraft landed on the same runway first.

Instead, as a tower controller watched in disbelief, the Cessna inexplicably entered the active runway without authorization. The inbound planes were ordered to overshoot their approaches and make routine “go-rounds.”

It was one of about 25 runway “incursions” at the airport over the last three years. None resulted in anything more serious than perhaps a bad scare.

But Transport Canada is concerned. It issued an advisory last week telling aircraft operators the rate of runway conflicts at Canadian airports remains stubbornly high. It wants operators, if they haven’t already, to adopt “sterile” flight decks. That means reducing pilots’ workloads and potential distractions while aircraft are taxiing to and from runways.

Incursions are on the Transportation Safety Board’s watchlist of critical safety issues, too.

“Given the millions of takeoffs and landings each year, incursions are rare, but their consequences can be catastrophic,” says the federal safety watchdog agency.

The deadliest accident in aviation history resulted from a runway incursion in March 1977 when two Boeing 747s collided on a foggy landing strip in the Canary Islands, killing 583 passengers and crew.

In Canada, there are approximately 350 incursions a year during roughly six million takeoffs and landings. For every 100,000 aircraft movements, the incursion rate dropped steadily to 4.25 in 2007 from 5.89 in 2003, according to Transport Canada.

But the rate has been slowly rising since. In 2011, it stood at 6.61 and at 6.09 in 2012. No one is certain why, though some aviation experts suggest it may be a case of improved reporting due to increased use of technologies and new airport procedures.

Nav Canada, the company that controls Canada’s civilian airspace, has installed airport surface detection and other sophisticated anti-incursion equipment at several major airports, including in Ottawa. Additional changes and improvements by industry and government include, for example, adopting clearer phraseology for ground instructions between pilots and controllers.

“The department continues to collaborate with industry stakeholders and our international partners to address the risk of aircraft collision with vehicles and other aircraft on the ground at Canadian airports,” Transport Canada said in a statement Wednesday.

The most common incursion scenarios involve an aircraft or vehicle crossing in front of a landing or departing aircraft; an aircraft or vehicle crossing the runway holding-position marking; an aircraft or vehicle unsure of its position and inadvertently entering an active runway; a breakdown in communications leading to failure to follow an air traffic control instruction; and an aircraft passing behind an aircraft or vehicle that has yet to leave the runway.

Airport improvement projects are another potential problem, resulting in more complex runway and taxiway layouts, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization. The situation is made worse, it says, by inadequate signage, markings, lighting and other factors.

Nav Canada statistics offer a more detailed picture. In the three-year period ending March 31, 2013, there were 1,099 runway incursions at airports overseen by Nav Canada. Of those, 662 or 60 percent were blamed on mistakes by pilots. Almost 60 per cent were classified as minor and posing “little or no chance” of collision.

The most revealing figure, however, shows that general aviation and private pilots — versus commercial airline and military pilots — were responsible for 68 per cent of incidents where an aircraft was at fault.

The Canadian Owners and Pilots Association, representing pilots who fly for personal travel and recreation, said it was unable to offer immediate comment for this story.

On the commercial passenger side, “sterile” cockpits are the norm during critical takeoff and landing phases, said Dan Adamus, president of Airline Pilots Association International’s Canada board.

“Almost every airline I know has procedures in their operating manual that talks about sterile cockpit and it’s from the time you push back (from the gate) until 10,000 feet ... and the same thing on the way down.

“The majority of checklists are done beforehand,” at the gate. “When it comes to taxi clearances (from controllers) if there’s ever any doubt — ‘are we supposed to cross (a runway) or not?’ — we always get clarification,” from the tower. “A runway incursion is a big deal, but there’s a lot of checks and balances in place, a lot of company procedures.”

He knows first-hand. Around 1990, Adamus was bringing in an airliner for a landing in London, Ont., when a sudden snow squall hit and obscured his visibility. He did a go-round and was cleared to land on another runway.

“I was just about to land — it’s snowing pretty bad — but all of a sudden I see some lights and I realize there’s snowplows on the runway,” that hadn’t been advised of the runway change. He pulled up and went around again.

“That was one of those ones that you don’t think about until you get on the ground.”


Source:  http://www.ottawacitizen.com