Airports and their runways come in all shapes and sizes, from turf strips lacking any real markings, but with trees at both ends, to massive, busy, complicated affairs like ATL, DFW, JFK or ORD. And pilots are expected to understand and comply with all procedures for operating at them, including taxiways and hotspots, runway intersections, LAHSO (land and hold short operations), and even soft-field takeoffs and landings on unpaved surfaces. As too many close calls involving runway incursions and near-misses remind us, sometimes things don’t go as planned.
A lot of the incursions and near-misses involve single- or crossing-runway events—and pilot error right alongside ATC mistakes. The industry’s conversation about these events is ongoing, but doesn’t often consider a common airport configuration: parallel runways. That’s too bad, especially since that configuration likely was a contributing factor in a recent fatal mid-air.
