Investigating Runway Incursion Incidents at United States Airports

Abstract

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the number of runway incursions is increasing. Over the last two decades, the number of runway incursions at U.S. airports has increased from 987 in 2002 to 25,036 in 2020. Runway incursions are a major threat to aviation safety, causing major delays and financial consequences for airlines, as well as injury or death through incidents such as aircraft collisions. The FAA promotes the implementation of runway safety technology, infrastructure, procedural methods, alterations to airport layouts, and training practices to reduce the frequency of runway incursions. In this paper, the relationship between airport geometry factors, mitigating technologies, and the number of runway incursions at large hub airports in the United States was investigated using a random effects Poisson model for analyses of panel data. Airport operations data from the FAA Air Traffic Activity System, runway incursion data from the FAA Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing System from 2002 to 2020, and airport geometry data created using airport geometry features from the FAA airport diagrams were collected. Thirty large hub airports with FAA-installed mitigating technologies were investigated. The model identified significant variables that correlate with runway incursions for large hub airport categories defined by the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS). The model results indicate that airports with significant numbers of runway-to-runway intersection points increase runway incursion rates and mitigating technologies Runway Status Lights (RWSLs) and Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X (ASDE-X), can help reduce runway incursions at severity levels A and B.