Wrong Place, Wrong Time

It was a pretty summer Saturday, early enough in the day so the air was cool and the density altitude was reasonable. The mission: the flying club’s annual Poker Run. If you haven’t participated in one—you should!—the rules are simple. You fly to five local airports, picked to make for a little over an hour’s flying time.

At each, you get a sealed envelope with a playing card. Sometimes these are hard to find, like “on the west wall of the self-service shack.” When you have five cards, you head for home, where there’s barbecue and prizes and lots of fun with people whose interests you share.

Turning Final

But the safety agenda is pretty weak. There were lots of airplanes entering unfamiliar patterns at non-towered fields, a big convergence at home close to lunch time and distractions from the poker part. I took a friend who was interested in flying. With five cards in hand, we headed home.

The pattern was busy! With my friend along, I was extra careful to explain all the radio calls. “Pokertown traffic, Winning Hand 1234X, left downwind Runway 21, Pokertown.” [Personal pet peeves: pilots who end this transmission with nothing, leaving you to wonder which of the many local Runway 21s is meant; and pilots who end this transmission with “Pokertown traffic.” That’s just bad English. You don’t have to agree.]

Turning final and making the radio call, I concentrated on showing off my landing skills to my friend. But there was a problem. When we were about a half-mile out, a Cessna 172 taxied onto the runway—no radio call—and took off. I went around and flew another pattern. The pilot apologized later—he was showing off for his friends, and got distracted.

It’s surprising that this doesn’t happen more often.

Incursions Happen

The FAA views runway and surface incursions as a big problem. They’re right: runway incursions can kill. They put a lot of effort into prevention, producing written materials, websites, presentations at WINGS seminars and other materials. Airports with operating control towers often broadcast warnings on the ATIS.

None of it is a complete solution. According to the FAA, there are around 1200 runway incursions per year in the U.S. There are actually more than that, because nobody counts the times when someone drag races along a runway at a quiet non-towered airport, nor does anybody count the times when the mower isn’t listening to the CTAF and won’t get out of the way.

Hot Spots

My current airport (KUAO, Aurora State Airport, Aurora, Oregon) is, unfortunately, an excellent example of how airport geometry can make it too easy for an airplane to end up someplace it shouldn’t be. 

The airport diagram, reproduced at right, shows a Hot Spot (HS 1) where taxiway A1 meets the north end of Runway 17-35. It doesn’t look that tricky on the diagram, but in reality it is a rather delicate dance. You can get an idea of the problem by looking at the satellite view on your favorite mapping app.

The self-service fuel pumps are on the ramp near A1. The airport diagram doesn’t show these. Another FBO fuels from a truck, which often has to use parallel taxiway A to get where it needs to go. The truck is based near A4, Hot Spot 2. There’s an additional, subtle problem: according to the chart supplement, “All taxilanes non std wingtip clnc.” That’s FAA talk for “the taxiways are really narrow.”

There is a standard line marking the edge of the movement area at Taxiway A. The airport diagram doesn’t show that there is a hangar between that part of the ramp and the tower, forcing airplanes to taxi very close to the edge line in order to get into a position with a line-of-sight view of the tower to obtain a taxi clearance.

So imagine: You’ve just fueled up, and the kids are ready for that trip to the coast. You taxi to the edge of the movement area, and then closer so the tower can hear you. At this point, you are unusually close to the hold short line for Runway 17, because of the narrow taxiway. To taxi to Runway 35 should be an immediate left turn, but a passing distraction might help you miss that turn. It’s all clearly marked, but the distances are confusing.

All Available Information

The FAA’s FAR 91.103 requires pilots to “become familiar with all available information concerning that flight.” With modern flight planning tools, this is much easier: the weather, Notams, airport diagram, chart supplement and pointers to special problems like Hot Spots are available in one place. That takes care of almost all the data specified in the regulation. 

But the satellite photo of the airport is available information now, too. Are pilots obliged by regulation to study the satellite photos of the taxiways? Technically, I think the answer is yes. Practically, though, really?

And someone who is hand-flying, whether VFR or IFR, will have a very hard time dividing attention between the airplane and the data. That’s why it’s a preflight action.

Musk And Bezos

“Surface incident” is the FAA term for something happening in a movement area without a clearance, other than an actual runway incursion. It’s the kind of thing that happens when an airplane is parked in that last space before the movement area boundary and a passenger wanders onto the taxiway while the pilot is distracted.

Pilots are supposed to watch out for this and tell passengers not to do it, but the airport environment is complicated and non-pilots sometimes get confused. Some airports, especially those with air carrier service, give badges to local pilots, owners and other workers to allow access. This can be partially due to Transportation Safety Administration requirements, but it’s also common sense to make sure that people have at least heard the rules.

But not everyone at the airport has been told the rules. One source of local surface incursions has been drivers of delivery vans. The rumor is that they are given directions that aren’t constructed by someone who knows airport movement rules. Without even knowing, they end up driving down the taxiway.

Another source of problems has been drivers of highly automated automobiles. While the FAA and most instructors recommend additional training for flying technically advanced aircraft, the drivers of technically advanced automobiles are pretty much on their own. The typical embedded mapping software does not include airport movement areas and likely hasn’t been recently updated if it did.

Incursions Will Happen

I do not see any easy fixes to the runway and surface incursion problems. At places like KSUN (Friedman Memorial Airport, Hailey, Idaho), where there is barely enough room for a marshaller between your nose and the edge of the movement area, it can be very easy to not see the markings. That puts the burden on pilots to “be extra vigilant,” which is pretty close to “Just say ‘no’ to runway incursions” as far as effective advice goes.

People without much aviation training may drive or walk into the movement area and not even know. That puts the burden on pilots to “be extra vigilant,” which is pretty close to “Just say ‘no’.”

And the poker? My hand was so bad that I won. I didn’t know we were playing high-low. Of course, I had already played that game in the pattern.