FAA holds runway safety meetings after string of incidents

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – Easterwood Airport is one of 90 airports participating in the annual runway safety meetings announced by the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday.

The announcement follows a string of runway incidents including a near collision a month ago in San Diego between a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 and a business jet. A similar incident happened in February in Austin involving a FedEx cargo plane and a Southwest Boeing 737 that came within 115 feet of each other in poor visibility conditions. The controller had cleared FedEx to land and Southwest to depart. The FAA issued a Safety Call to Action in February followed by a Safety Summit in March.

According to the FAA, they want to reduce the amount of serious close calls caused by runway incursion events to zero. Those are incidents where a plane, vehicle, or person is in a landing or take-off zone when they are not supposed to be. The meetings are held annually at each airport that has a control tower.

During the “Runway Safety Action Team Meeting” airport stakeholders will identify risks and then develop a plan to eliminate them specific to the airport. There are several other airports in Texas participating in the meetings, including TSTC Waco Airport, Dallas Love Field Airport, Midland International Air & Space Port, and more.

According to data from the FAA, Easterwood Airport has not had any runway incursions in 2023, but had five last year. Easterwood Airport said incursions were due to pilot errors, not directions from the control tower. Those numbers are not far off from Texas State Technical College in Waco which also had zero this year, but two last year. In comparison, larger airports like Dallas-Fort Worth have had 11 for the year and 14 last year.

Officials at Easterwood Airport said they’ve completed their meeting on Monday and released the following statement:

“Easterwood Airport supports the FAA’s ‘Runway Safety Action Team’ meetings as a way to maintain awareness and manage this risk with aircraft operators and controllers. We appreciate the FAA including Easterwood in its education program,” Easterwood Airport Management said.

FAA data shows that there have been a total of 1,489 runway incursions this year. In 2022, there were 1,579 incidents by August.