Runway Safety - Incursions
1,636 runway incursions were reported to the FAA in FY2025 alone. This gives an indication of the frequency of runway incursions worldwide. Most incursions have benign outcomes, but some of the deadliest accidents have been attributed to runway incursions, beginning with the Tenerife accident in 1977, still aviations deadliest with 574 fatalities, to the most recent at New York's La Guardia airport which tragically killed both pilots of a landing CRJ900. This workshop is designed to help individuals and organisations avoid incursions through modified operational behaviours.
Who should attend?
Pilots, instructors, ATC controllers, airport managers and all personnel authorised to drive a motor vehicle on the operational surfaces of an aerodrome, including fire services, runway inspection drivers, refuellers etc.
Key Topics
- Runway safety essentials - case study analysis
- Introduction to a practical analysis taxonomy
- Taxiway Incursions - shared causation.
- Listing and classifying desired behaviours
- Linking behaviours to pilot/ operator competencies.
- The role of active listening and expectation bias.
- The pivotal role of ATC, normalisation of deviance and the assumption of familiarity.
- Technological solutions - barriers and limitations.
- Designing local interventions.
Workshop Objectives
By the end of the Runway Safety Workshop, participants will be able to:
- Describe the main causes and consequences of taxiway and runway incursions.
- Apply a practical analysis taxonomy to identify underlying threats, errors, and latent conditions across flight operations, ATC, and airport domains.
- Identify and articulate desired behaviours for each stakeholder group, linking them explicitly to pilot/ATCO competencies and local procedures.
- Analyse how communication patterns, expectation bias, and assumption of familiarity can degrade situational awareness and contribute to runway‑safety occurrences.
- Design feasible local interventions (procedural, training, and infrastructure changes such as signage, markings, phraseology, and hot‑spot charts) and prioritise them based on impact versus effort.
- Explain the role and optimal composition of local Runway Safety Teams and use key reference material (e.g. GAPPRI, RST handbooks) to support ongoing safety improvement.
- Commit to a small set of concrete next steps for their own organisation or unit, aligned with workshop insights.
Prerequisites
Attendees should have aviation experience in some domain to enable participation in interactive discussions.
Are you interested to learn more?
E-mail: info@mitchellaviation.com
Address: 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom