Runway Incursions

1 April 2014 1240Z

No foolin’. I attended a FAAST team meeting last night and was reminded of the importance of avoiding runway incursions.

To avoid such mishaps, ensure that you write down your taxi clearance (at a controlled field), read it back correctly, and understand where you are going and how you are going to get there before your release the brakes. When in doubt, seek clarification from ground control, and /or ask for a progressive taxi clearance. Let me republish Capt. Eugene Cernan’s compelling quote on this matter.

“I consider myself to be an experienced aviator: 22 years in the Navy, 9,000-plus hours accumulated in both military and civilian aircraft, most of which were high-performance flying machines. I’ve made more than 200 carrier landings, and three space flights. . . . All that . . . and yet I violated a cardinal rule by entering an active runway without clearance. My incident should be a wake-up call for everyone starting with myself. The message is that no matter who we are, where we have been, how many hours or landings we may have, or how good we may think we are, we all are prone to the inevitability of making a mistake . . . if it can happen to me—IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU.” (Source: Instrument Flying: 10 Indispensable Principles to Know and Remember, 2014, p. 120. www.doubleillc.com)

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