Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

5-2023

School/College

College of Science, Engineering, and Technology (COSET)

Degree Name

MS in Transportation Planning & Management

Committee Chairperson

Yi Qi , , David Olowokere

Committee Member 1

Fengxiang Qiao

Committee Member 2

Mehdi Azimi

Committee Member 3

David Olowokere

Keywords

• Airport Safety • ASDE-X Technology • Panel Model • Runway Geometry • Runway Incursions • RWSL Technology

Abstract

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the number of runway incursions are rising. Over the last two decades, the number of runway incursions at US airports has increased from 987 in 2002 to 25,036 in 2020. Runway incursions are a major threat to aviation safety, causing major delays and financial consequences for airlines, as well as injury or death through incidents such as aircraft collisions. The FAA promotes the implementation of runway safety technology, infrastructure, procedural methods, changing airport layouts, and training practices to reduce the frequency of runway incursions. In this paper, the relationship between airport geometry factors, mitigating technologies, and the number of runway incursions at large hub airports in the United States was investigated using Random Effects Poisson Model for Panel Data analyses. Airport operations data from the FAA Air Traffic Activity System, runway incursion data from the FAA Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing System from 2002 through 2020, and airport geometry data created using airport geometry features from the FAA airport diagrams were collected. 30 large hub airports with FAA installed mitigating technologies were investigated. The model identified significant variables that correlate with incursions, based on airport geometry, for large hub airports categories defined by the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS). The model results indicate that airport with significant number of runway-to-runway intersection points increase runway incursion rates and mitigating technologies ASDE-X and RSWL help reduce severity A and B incursions. Only four variables, “RWY_RWY, Airport operations, ASDE-X and RWSL”, were found to be significant.

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