Investigation shows errors rampant in FAA airport runway safety database
By John Croft
A new audit by the US Transportation Department's inspector general (IG) faults the FAA's airports organization for poor bookkeeping in its effort to track improvements to runway safety areas (RSAs) at a large number of commercial service airports.
According to a 3 March report, investigators reviewing data records for 163 RSAs found at least one error in 64 RSA records, a 38% error rate. The one-year audit set out to determine the FAA's progress in upgrading hundreds of RSAs to comply with FAA standards, a process the US Congress has mandated for completion by 2015.
The IG found that the FAA had made "significant" progress on the effort since 2000, with 327 of the 454 "priority" RSAs improved to date.
Lacking, however, was the "data quality" of the FAA's records and its progress in removing certain navigational aids like runway lights and landing guidance systems from the safety areas.
RSAs are designed to provide an obstacle-free area on each end of a runway in case an aircraft over- or under-runs the runway. Ideally, the overrun area will measure 305m (1,000ft) in length and 152m in width, centred on the runway. Navigational aids (navaids), if required to be in the area, must snap off with the immovable portion not exceeding 7.6cm (3in) in height above the ground.
In cases where the airport cannot for a variety of reasons provide the clear area, the FAA allows for use of engineered arresting systems (crushable concrete) that stop an aircraft in less distance, though in about 2% of cases, "improvements are so expensive that the FAA does not require further action", says the IG.
Of the 163 RSAs reviewed, investigators determined that 67 contained navigational aids that needed to be moved or made snappable (frangible), though FAA airports officials and field offices "rarely" coordinated on the efforts.
Further, inspectors found that the FAA did not have a nationwide plan to correct RSA navaids, including at 11 of the 30 largest airports. "Given the large number of passengers these airports serve, it is critical that FAA and airport sponsors expedite ongoing efforts to achieve needed improvements," the report states.
In some cases, issues had been corrected but the RSA inventory database did not reflect the status. Investigators found data records of two non-compliant instrument landing system towers at the Los Angeles and Sacramento airports, though the equipment had already been relocated.
Other database errors included a record that one RSA at the Dulles International Airport was obstacle-free when in actuality an instrument landing system tower needed to be relocated and an entry calling for $39 million for a major runway and RSA project at Los Angeles that had been completed a year earlier.
