2023-08-27 06:35:12
Antonio Olmedo / Digital Aviation, Sp. – The Federal Aviation Administration has granted more than $121 million to airports across the country to reduce the risk of runway incursions. The projects will reconfigure taxiways that may cause confusion, install new lighting systems and provide more flexibility at airfields.
The FAA takes the eradication of runway incursions very seriously and they are allocating significant resources to this issue. There is no doubt that the The best way to address security risks is to modify or reconfigure existing airfields and these investments are directly aimed at improving those situations.
While the European authorities, including the Spanishget lost in ineffective bureaucracy, regulations and wasteful spending, American authorities address aviation hazards head-on. The dangers in aviation are latent, and are corrected in the bud or become a serious security risk.
It seems appropriate to comment on what is danger and what is risk. An airport can be dangerous, due to its location, its weather, its poor infrastructure, its orography or simply because of its design. But, in practice, you have no risk. The risk appears when commercial, political or any other interest forces you to use it commercially.
Let’s see a very simple example. For example, a badly banked road curve is marked with the dangerous curve sign. If you take the curve walking, you hardly run any risk. If you take it at 120 km/h the risk of an accident increases potentially. Well, this is what our aeronautical authorities are dedicated to, putting up danger signals, but not solving latent dangers. It is certainly cheaper to put up a sign than to fix the superelevation.
It causes a lot of envy like the American aviation authorities, the FAA, analyze and discover the hazards in your airport infrastructure. They work on them, study them, commit to them and solve them. Yes of course, with money. But investing in security is not spending, it is saving. There is nothing more expensive than an accident.
The investment projects in airport improvements recently announced these days by the FAA seem trivial, of little weight, but it gives an idea of the importance of correcting small details in airports that protect operational safety. Here we dedicate ourselves to putting marbles and creating pharaonic infrastructures in the terminals, or creating new airports that are absolutely underused. It seems that this has more political gain, not to mention other types of interests.
This past March, more than 200 security officials from across the US aviation industry gathered at specific sessions to discuss ways to improve flight safety, in the framework of the FAA Aviation Safety Summit held in McLean, Virginia.
Well, the sessions focused on business operations, the air traffic system, airport and ground operations, and general aviation operations. Each group was led by an industry member and an FAA expert.. In his opening remarks at the plenary session open to a wide audience, the Acting Administrator of the FAA, Billy Nolenwho on April 21 announced his intention to leave office this summer, urged the industry to look at all aspects of its operations with fresh eyes already «question conventional wisdom«, while examining ways to further improve aviation safety.
«There’s no doubt that aviation is amazingly safe, but surveillance can never take a day off.«Nolen said. «We must ask ourselves difficult and sometimes uncomfortable questions, even when we are confident that the system is strong.«.
Nolen convened the summit to focus the industry’s attention following a series of recent security incidents, especially those involving plane raids on the active runway during taxiing.
Nolen urged attendees to discuss and study the concrete measures that they could adopt in their respective fields to further strengthen the already strong safety net of the US aviation industry.
During the work sessions, the Gathered aviation industry groups focused on the recent series of incidents published by the FAA, to look for ways to address areas where existing security systems could be strengthened to prevent future incidents.
Active runway incursions can cause catastrophic accidents. Pilot errors during taxiing, caused by poor signaling, poor lighting, low visibility, bad information on navigation charts, or insufficiently clear control instructions, can lead to a catastrophic situation by inadvertently encroaching on the runway in use.
The FAA has addressed this issue by correcting minor defects, that is, addressing the root issue in its airport network. and making millionaire investments.
at the airport Boston Logan International has invested 44.9 million dollars to simplify the layout of the aerodrome by eliminating part of the taxiways, as identified in the plan of airport runway incursion mitigation. The project also plans to recondition the pavement of some taxiways and the 10,083 feet of the current runway 15R/33L to maintain the structural integrity of the pavement and minimize foreign object debris.
In it Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, the investment reaches 39.8 million dollars to simplify the layout of the aerodrome, eliminating part of the taxiways and making geometric improvements. It also plans to install a new lighting system on the taxiways to improve the safety of operations in low visibility conditions.
In it Ronald Reagan Washington National Airportthe planned investment is 5 million dollars for the construction of new taxiways.
In it Willow Run Airport, Detroit (Michigan) is $12.8 million to build a 6,720-foot parallel taxiway to eliminate the need for aircraft to back up the runway.
Other investments are in the Aeropuerto Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express (Ohio), 4.6 million, in the Richmond International Airport (Virginia) of $5.6 million, in the Jackson Hole Airport, (Wyoming), $2.6 million to construct a 1,500-foot taxiway that would also eliminate the need for aircraft to back up the runway.
last in the Naples Municipal Airport (Florida), $3.5 million to reconfigure the taxiway at the runway intersection to improve geometry.
These are examples of how safety can be improved on a small scale, with improvement interventions directly applied to airport infrastructures. Less marble and more security.
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