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Pilots and controllers are doing a pretty good job of keeping airplanes apart on the runway. During the four-year period from 1997 to 2000 there were 266 million takeoff and landing operations at the country's 459 tower-controlled airports, and only 1,369 of those operations involved a runway incursion. That means pilots or controllers only make a potentially dangerous mistake five times for every one million takeoffs or landings. Not bad.
But three of those mistakes between 1997 and 2000 caused fatal accidents. And the fact remains that the most deadly aircraft accident in aviation history was caused by a runway incursion when two Boeing 747s collided on Tenerife Island in 1977, killing 578. And just last fall an airliner on takeoff roll collided with a CitationJet in Italy, killing all aboard both airplanes.
The safety record for major airlines and corporate jets is so good that few patterns of accidents remain. Nearly every crash is caused by a unique set of circumstances-except for runway incursions. The total number of runway incursions is small, but the rest of the system is so safe that incursions stand out as one of the greatest identifiable hazards in our air transportation system. The FAA is determined to improve that situation, and Congress is even more resolute in keeping the pressure on the FAA and pilots to improve. That's why the FAA kicked off a wide-ranging runway incursion awareness campaign in January.
By definition, a runway incursion is any error that creates a potential for a collision on a runway. Because the mistake must be made by a controller, pilot, operator of a vehicle or a pedestrian, a runway incursion can only happen at a controlled airport. At uncontrolled airports the "see and avoid" principle applies and, if there is a collision, everybody involved has at least some responsibility. The risk of a collision is even greater at uncontrolled airports than at towered airports, but there is nothing the FAA can do about that, except to remind all pilots that they are responsible to see and avoid each other.
It's important to understand that a mistake by a controller or pilot-what the FAA calls a deviation-won't be counted as a runway incursion unless there is the potential for a collision. So if a controller clears you to hold short of a runway, but you taxi onto or across the runway, a runway incursion occurred only if another airplane was on a potential collision course. If there was no other airplane using, or about to use, the runway, there wasn't an incursion. But the FAA can still take action against a pilot who fails to follow a taxi, or any other, clearance even when no risk of a collision was involved.
