Runway Incursion Avoidance Series 1 (Airport HOT SPOTS)

 

(airportsmstalk.blogspot.com)

By Jason L Hamlett CM, ACE, GSP, CPI 06/08/2023

Airport SMS Facebook Group

Runway Incursion Avoidance – Airport HOT SPOTS

What we know about airport HOT SPOTS 🔥

An airport hot spot is defined as a physical location on an airport’s movement area known for being high risk for the potential of creating a runway incursion or ground collision. Most hot spots exist at runway intersections and exit points. Typically, hot spots are areas of complicated design and bad airport layout planning. Pilots and ground vehicle drivers should use elevated situational awareness when entering known hot spots.

How to identify an airport HOT SPOT 🔥

History is always the best teacher. At your home airport, data from past surface events, accidents, and near misses can be telling to where problem areas exist in the airport movement area. For this reason, data integrity and collection of surface events is critical for airport management. When visiting airports, hot spot locations can be found on the airports diagram chart supplement.  An example of this is provided as the attached picture. Aeronav also produces a list of known airport hots spots as published by the FAA. This can be found here: All_Hotspot.PDF (faa.gov). In 2022 the FAA undertook a hot spot standardization project. This effort standardized the symbols and verbiage used on airport diagram charts to be consistent and less confusing. Today only two symbols are used to identify hot spots, they are either a circle or a cylinder.

How to reduce the risk of HOT SPOTS 🧯

Heightened awareness, knowledge, reduced exposure, inclusion, and training are all excellent suggestions to reduce the risk of an accident at a hot spot. Heightened awareness can be maintained by staying vigilant and always knowing your exact location and destination while driving or operating in the movement area. Knowledge ties into heightened awareness from utilizing experience from airfield driving and having a through understanding of the complexity and challenges of your airport’s layout. When I was an operations specialist, the hairs on the back of my neck would stand up when I approached a intersection with multiple entrance and exit points. Knowing the size and type of aircraft that operate on the airfield helps as well. For example, if I observed an aircraft with a Delta logo, I could speculate where it would park and its path. If the plane were a heavy, it would most likely go to the heavy departure runway, or parking gate at the terminal. If it were a regional jet, it would most likely go to the regional terminal or secondary departure runway.  To reduce exposure, hot spots should be avoided by ground vehicle drivers when at all possible. This is accomplished by proper planning and the use of alternate routes such as access roads. Never cross a runway or taxiway to save time regardless of if its closed. Inclusion involves participating in inhouse discussion and asking questions when necessary. My home airport host FAA sponsored Runway Safety Action Team RSAT meetings bi-yearly. These forums are excellent in identifying and declassifying a movement area surface as a known hot spot.  Training is something airfield drivers and pilots are accustomed too. As a safety manager and aviation professional, I’m all for spending time and resources on training. I want to highlight here the quality of your airports training efforts. Make suggestions, and think outside the box to improve training and never allow your training sessions to become mundane.

As mentioned, know, and avoid airport hot spots whenever possible. Always use a heightened sense of vigilance when in the area of a known hot spot. This simple advice can make the difference in preventing a simple operation from becoming an accident investigation.

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