Mounting evidence confirms that publication of airport hot spots raises runway-safety threat awareness, several U.S. specialists say. Noting successes at sites where runway incursions have dropped significantly, an ongoing standardization initiative by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has created a single national process for generating hot-spot notifications to aircraft operators, pilots, airfield drivers and air traffic controllers. These official notifications coexist with informal educational media, which for the first time are available from a central repository on the agency’s Web site.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) defines hot spot as “a location on an aerodrome movement area with a history or potential risk of collision or runway incursion, and where heightened attention by pilots/drivers is necessary.”1 Its standards and recommended practices, amplified three years ago, have prompted similar steps by civil aviatio…
