Runway Incursion Avoidance

"Any occurrence in the airport runway environment involving an aircraft, vehicle, person, or object on the ground that creates a collision hazard or results in a loss of required separation with an aircraft taking off, intending to take off, landing, or intending to land" (PHAK ch. 14).

Teach the second half of that sentence — it is not just "being on a runway." Loss of required separation counts even if nobody came close.

Approximately three runway incursions occur each day at towered airports in the United States. About 65 percent of all runway incursions are caused by pilots, and FAA data shows almost half of those pilot incursions are caused by general aviation pilots (PHAK ch. 14).

That statistic is the hook for your ground lesson: the population most likely to do this is sitting in your right seat.

From detailed investigation of incursions over the past 10 years (PHAK ch. 14):

• Failure to comply with ATC instructions
• Lack of airport familiarity
• Nonconformance with standard operating procedures

Every technique you teach maps back to one of these three.

A subset of runway incursions in which a pilot unintentionally takes off or lands on a taxiway or the wrong runway — usually unnoticed until after it happens. Three factors increase the risk (PHAK ch. 14):

• Airport complexity
• Close proximity of runway thresholds
• Joint use of a runway as a taxiway

The mitigation is a last-instrument-scan habit: set the heading bug to the runway heading, align the airplane, and confirm heading matches runway heading before adding power (PHAK ch. 14).

Four yellow lines — two solid, two dashed — painted across the full width of the taxiway, in alignment with and collocated with the holding position sign (PHAK ch. 14).

• Approaching the runway you see the solid lines first. Stop before them; no part of the airplane may intersect the first solid line. Do not cross the double solid lines without an ATC clearance.
• Exiting the runway you approach the dashed lines first. The entire aircraft must cross both the dashed and solid lines to be clear of the runway. No clearance is needed to cross in that direction.

Noncompliance may result in the FAA filing a pilot deviation.

White characters outlined in black on a red background — the airport version of a stop sign. It is always collocated with the surface painted holding position markings and is located where taxiways intersect runways (PHAK ch. 14).

• At a taxiway intersecting the threshold of the takeoff runway, only that runway's designation may appear.
• Elsewhere, the sign shows the intersecting runway's designation, with the numbers arranged to match the relative location of the thresholds — "18-36" means Runway 18's threshold is to the left, 36's to the right.
• At a runway/runway intersection, both designations appear with arrows showing approximate alignment and the direction to each threshold.

Surface painted holding position signs — white characters on red, painted left of the taxiway centerline — do the same job (PHAK ch. 14).

It gives you a visual cue for when you are clear of the runway safety area boundary. You are out of the RSA when the entire aircraft has passed the sign and the accompanying surface painted marking (PHAK ch. 14). Teach students to keep rolling until the whole airplane is past it before stopping to run a checklist.

A hot spot is a location on the airport with a history or potential risk of collision or surface deviation, designated on the airport diagram — for example, a complex taxiway/runway/runway intersection like Taxiway Bravo crossing Runways 31-13 and 35-17 at Sioux Gateway (PHAK ch. 14). Brief the hot spots on the diagram before you leave the ramp — AI.II.C.K5 lists briefing hot spot locations as a required flight deck activity.

• Read back all runway crossing and hold short instructions — verbatim readback of hold short instructions is mandatory
• Review airport layouts as part of preflight planning, before descending to land, and while taxiing as needed
• Know airport signage
• Review NOTAMs for runway/taxiway closures and construction
• Request progressive taxi instructions when unsure of the route
• Check for traffic before crossing any runway hold line and before entering a taxiway
• Turn on aircraft lights and the rotating beacon or strobes while taxiing
• When landing, clear the active runway as soon as possible, then wait for taxi instructions before further movement
• Study and use proper phraseology
• Write down complex taxi instructions at unfamiliar airports

The flight deck runs on sterile-cockpit rules for GA during taxi (PHAK ch. 14):

• Current airport diagram out, heads-up with eyes outside, entire attention devoted to surface navigation per the ATC clearance
• All checklists completed while the aircraft is stopped
• No nonessential chatter or other activities

You enforce it by modeling it — your student will taxi the way you taxi.

Mitigate this by (PHAK ch. 14):

• Writing down all taxi instructions as soon as they are received
• Monitoring the clearances and instructions issued to other aircraft
• Being especially vigilant when another aircraft has a similar sounding call sign
• Reading back your complete clearance with your call sign so ATC can catch a misunderstanding

That is the direct antidote to the confirmation and expectation bias named in AI.II.C.R2.

Pilot deviation: an action of a pilot that violates any Federal Aviation Regulation — ground (surface) examples include taxiing, taking off, or landing without clearance, deviating from an assigned taxi route, or failing to hold short of an assigned clearance limit.

What you owe ATC: notification as soon as possible following a deviation. Regulations do authorize deviating from a clearance in response to a TCAS resolution advisory, but that still requires notifying ATC afterward (PHAK ch. 14).

Also teach V/PDs: vehicle or pedestrian deviations, where a vehicle, pedestrian, or object enters the movement area without ATC authorization.

When the tower is closed or at a nontowered field, you may taxi onto or across the runway only when the runway is clear and there are no aircraft on final approach, and then only with extreme caution — always look both ways (PHAK ch. 14). Nothing authorizes you to cross; you authorize yourself, which is exactly why students get complacent here. Teach a positive verbal clearing call before every hold line: "clear left, clear right, clear final, crossing Runway 27."

Use guided discussion rather than lecture — the material is procedural and the learner already has surface experience to draw on (AIH ch. 5).

1. Motivation — open with the number: three incursions a day, 65 percent caused by pilots (PHAK ch. 14). Ask the learner to describe a taxi they found confusing.
2. Elements — signs and markings (red-and-white = mandatory instruction; the four-line hold marking and which side you approach from), the taxi clearance and the readback rule, the airport diagram.
3. Application — put the diagram of your home field on the table and have the learner brief a taxi clearance out loud, highlighting the route and calling the hold short points and hot spots.
4. Completion standard — the learner writes down a complex taxi clearance, reads it back correctly, traces the route, and identifies every runway they will cross.

Then transfer it to the airplane in the very next lesson while primacy is working for you (AIH ch. 2).

Model the same script every time so it becomes the student's habit pattern:

• Diagram out, current, oriented to the airplane's actual heading
• Departure runway identified, expected route traced
• Hold short points and hot spots named out loud
• "If we get lost or unsure, we stop and ask for progressive taxi"
• Lights and beacon on before movement

The last item is not decoration — turning on lights and the rotating beacon or strobes while taxiing is one of the listed incursion-prevention practices (PHAK ch. 14).

• Head down. Running a checklist while rolling. Correct it by taking the airplane to a stop and re-teaching that checklists are done stopped (PHAK ch. 14).
• Readback without comprehension. The student parrots "hold short Runway 27" without knowing where 27 is. Fix by requiring the student to point to it on the diagram before moving.
• Expectation bias. The student taxis the route they used last time. Fix by requiring a written clearance every time, even at the home field.
• Stopping past the hold line. The airplane must stop before the first solid yellow line, with no part of the aircraft intersecting it (PHAK ch. 14). Teach a visual reference: the line disappearing under the cowl is already too far.
• Stopping short when exiting. The entire aircraft must cross both the dashed and solid lines to be clear (PHAK ch. 14).

Anytime the airplane is moving toward a hold line the student has not accounted for, or the student's attention is inside the cockpit approaching a runway. Use the positive three-step exchange — "My controls," "Your controls," "My controls" — briefed on the ground before the flight (AIH ch. 9). On the surface, "take the controls" usually means brakes and throttle: stop first, sort it out second. A stopped airplane on a taxiway is embarrassing; a moving airplane on a runway is an incursion.

Taxiing at an unfamiliar airport is challenging, "especially during hours of darkness or low visibility" (PHAK ch. 14). At night the airport reduces to a set of lights: taxiway edge lights are blue, and the hold-line geometry that is obvious in daylight is nearly invisible.

Mitigations you teach are the same ones, applied harder:

• Progressive taxi requests
• Slower taxi speed
• Stopping before each runway
• Confirming position with the diagram at each turn

Your night-solo student got that endorsement partly because you demonstrated night taxi at that specific airport (61.87(o)(1)).

Crossing one runway does not clear you of the other — the hold markings for the second runway can be only a few hundred feet beyond the first. The airport-complexity and close-proximity-of-thresholds factors from the runway confusion discussion both apply (PHAK ch. 14). Teach the student to treat each hold line as a separate decision requiring a separate clearance, and to read the sign — not the memory — for which runway is next.

The airplane is slow, the workload feels over, and the student is relieved. This is where the runway safety area boundary sign matters: clear the runway completely, then wait for taxi instructions before further movement (PHAK ch. 14). Two failure modes to name for the student: stopping with the tail still inside the hold line, and beginning an uncleared taxi to the ramp. Teach a post-landing pause: full stop clear of the RSA, then flows and checklist, then call ground.