The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced that as part of the February 2023 Safety Call to Action to improve runway safety in the United States, it will install a runway incursion device at 74 airports nationwide. Part of Safety Call to Action On March 19, the FAA disclosed that it would be rolling out a technological safety feature at a total of 74 airports and their air traffic control (ATC) towers. Specifically, the regulator will be installing Runway Incursion Devices (RID) across 74 airports in the US, which is one of the three fast-tracked initiatives launched out of the February 2023 ‘Safety Call to Action’ initiative to improve runway safety.
At the time, following numerous runway incursions across airports in the country that included several high-profile near-misses, Billy Nolen, the former Acting Administrator of the FAA, launched the initiative “with the goal of ensuring that our structure is fit for purpose for the US aerospace system both today and the future.” According to the FAA, the RIDs are one of three situational awareness solutions in the FAA’s portfolio, complemented by the Surface Awareness Initiative (SAI) and Approach Runway Verification System (ARV). The regulator noted that SAIs are operational at 18 airports, with plans to add the technology to 32 others by the end of 2025, while ARVs are active at 85 control towers in the US.
The NTSB also identified three factors that had contributed to the safety event. Already operation.