DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON
Industry task force set up to make recommendations on safety programme, data collection and improvement policies
Europe has admitted it has a runway safety problem but no data to assess trends or degree of risk.
At a runway safety workshop in Brussels on 9-10 September, air navigation body Eurocontrol formed a team of agencies and industry experts to ensure standardised data is gathered, analysed, and used.
The organisation's director general Victor Aguado says: "Runway safety is a vital component of aviation safety as a whole. With the expected growth of air traffic, sheer numbers of incidents are bound to rise unless held in check by pragmatic, sensible solutions."
The workshop brought together industry representative bodies, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, Joint Aviation Authorities and the US Federal Aviation Administration to work out how to advance runway safety, particularly to reduce risks of incursion.
Although the runway incursion disaster in October at Milan Linate airport, Italy, in which 122 people died, added urgency to the mission, Eurocontrol and its aviation group and agency partners had already started a programme to reduce runway incursion incidents (Flight International, 20-26 November, 2001). Eurocontrol had commissioned a study group in July last year to examine the issue.
Its conclusions were that Europe must improve runway safety; and "surprisingly little data exists on runway safety occurrences in Europe, and the quality of what there is varies. As a result, it is not possible to predict a safety trend with reliability."
Eurocontrol says the primary need is for an industry-wide "harmonised and consistent approach to data collection and analysis", and a system for sharing the gathered information.
The agency has set up a Steering Committee, which has been given the task of making recommendations by January on:
a runway safety programme; a programme for collection and dissemination of data; prioritisation of short-term improvement policies (procedures for pilots and vehicle drivers, implementation of ICAO Annex 14 standards for airport signs and markings); assessment of long-term improvement policies (both new technologies and improvements in human factors).Source: Flight International
