Air Transport

US FAA administrator Marion Blakey and 40 representatives from the aviation industry are to meet on 15 August to discuss solutions to the runway incursion problem at US airports, ATI, flightglobal.com's sister news source, has learned.

The meeting, at the headquarters of the Aerospace Industry Association in Arlington, Virginia, will consider solutions to the runway problems in the short-, medium- and longer-term of up to two years.

Airframer Boeing and avionics manufacturers Rockwell Collins and Honeywell have been invited to attend the closely held meeting.

The FAA meeting comes almost six months after the agency approved guidance for developing situational awareness aids based on relatively low-cost electronic flight bags in the cockpit, though no manufacturers have yet been contracted to build such a unit.

The US National Transportation Safety Board, as part of a runway incursion symposium, held in March, emphasised that an incursion disaster is imminent if new technologies, including in-cockpit displays that show an aircraft’s position on an electronic map of the airport, are not rapidly introduced.