FAA Upgrades Wrong-Surface Alert Technology
System alerts controllers when pilots inadvertently line up to land on a taxiway instead of a runway.
By Jim Tise, FAA
If your Uber driver drops you off at the wrong location, it’s not the end of the world. But if a pilot lines up to land on a taxiway instead of a runway, the stakes are life and death.
To help prevent these wrong-surface landings, the FAA completed enhancing the ground radar systems at 43 major airports to notify controllers. The ASDE-X Taxiway Arrival Prediction (ATAP) is sophisticated software that predicts when an airplane lines up to land on a taxiway and provides a visual and audible alert to controllers. The FAA finished the software additions last September at airports that have either ASDE-X or the comparable ASSC ground radar systems.
Wrong-surface landings are one of the FAA’s Top 5 safety hazards in the national airspace system (NAS).
“ATAP provides an extra layer of safety for pilots and passengers at airports with multiple parallel runways and taxiways,” said Captain Jeffrey Sedin, airport ground environment chairman with the Air Line Pilots Association.
ATAP has helped prevent more than 50 wrong-surface taxiway landings since its first implementation at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in 2018. There have been eight alerts already this year.
“All saves are equal,” said Giovanni Dipierro, former manager of the FAA’s Runway Safety Group. “Aircraft as small as a Cessna Caravan 208 up to a Boeing 757 have been sent around due to an ATAP alert. Thanks to ATAP, we can mitigate the risk of air carrier wrong surface taxiway landings and significantly reduce potential collisions between passenger aircraft.”
“ATAP is a great technology aid to assist controllers in mitigating these events, and has proven to be effective,” said Bridget Singratanakul, a runway safety representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). A controller of 15 years, she has been involved in developing controller training for each of the sites and co-lead for the National Collaborative Workgroup on ATAP.
The National Collaborative Workgroup was able to roll out ATAP on an accelerated timeline despite interruptions due to the pandemic, saving the FAA time and money while further enhancing the safety of the NAS.
“We worked cohesively on this during the peak of COVID,” said Singratanakul. “It was an emphasis item that both FAA and NATCA agreed on.”
The FAA also is working on a wrong-surface landing alert system for airports that don’t have the ASDE-X or ASSC. Testing that system will begin later in 2023 in Omaha.
