My Airport Operations

By Iain McCreary

Yesterday, a French court found Continental Airlines guilty of manslaughter when it dropped the piece of debris that brought down the Concorde in July 2000. While this ruling creates several legal precedents, one of the more powerful consequences is that the stage is now set for airlines to begin suing other airlines over debris and damage, worldwide.

This brings us full circle, as we had already seen airlines suing airports over debris. Most recently Air Canada sued Edmonton airport over runway debris that damaged an engine. Most expensively, Lufthansa sued the Frankfurt airport operator Fraport over FOD damage - these latter two parties settled out of court for an undisclosed amount but the rumour at the time was for a settlement of roughly €6M ($8M).

With large airports already bearing liability on the order of $1Bn in the event of a serious accident, improved understanding of FOD risk and this growing tendency to sue over damage only makes airport financial burdens larger. Worse, the French legal precedent means that airport managers could face personal criminal liability if the airport is found negligent.

Avoid the Risks:
Automated runway scanning systems (aka ‘FOD detection’ systems) that scan runways for debris and birds all but eliminate these strike risks. As importantly, these systems can help to make an airport “risk transparent”.

In operational settings, FOD detection systems have proven capable not only of detecting and supporting the removal of FOD (and birds) before an accident occurs, but they also let airports identify the aircraft that was the source of the debris. Thus, if an airport is sued over debris, it has the ability to pass some or all of that liability on to the parties that were the source of the debris.

This is just one of the unexpected side benefits possible when airports use automated runway scanning systems. Combined with strong financials; operational data showing the inefficiency of visual inspections; and the risk of airlines using FOD collection data to “claw back” landing fees, the investment case for these new technologies is strongly compelling.
 
A New Perspective on Runway Safety:
This and many other findings are part of a powerful and detailed new report from Iain McCreary. This long awaited report is the single best analysis of runway safety, FOD, and on-runway strikes presently available. It is data driven, values neutral, and draws together information from airlines, airports, regulators, and service/technology firms. It, for the first time, knits together an industry-wide perspective that allows like-for-like comparison of runway safety incidents, including incursions and excursions.

•    FOD strikes on the runway are four orders of magnitude more frequent and 132 times more expensive than collisions form runway incursions.
•    By their own numbers, the newly merged United Continental spend as much on these strikes as they expect to save from the merger itself, yet no airline CFO seems aware of either their own expenditure nor the opportunity to cut these costs.
•    New approaches to setting regulatory priorities are needed. Using cost as a metric turns long established and accepted ideas upside down.
•    Along with NextGen technologies, runway scanning could drive a revolution in airside operations management.

Structured for easy reading, and quickly digestible with tools to support your own analyses, the report is quickly becoming ‘required reading’ in the aviation community.

Whether you are a regulator, airport operator, airline, service provider, or technology vendor, this report has the answers to your questions about FOD, bird strikes, and automated runway scanning. A brochure with introductory details, various testimonials, links to recent press/media articles, the report itself, and various other useful pieces of information are all available on the website www.runway-safety.com. 

• FOD
• runway
• Safety
• Inspections
• detection