FAA Upgrades Wrong-Surface Alert Technology
<p>If your Uber driver drops you off at the wrong location, it’s not the end of the world. But if a pilot lines up to land on a taxiway instead of a runway, the stakes are life and death.</p>
<p>To help prevent these wrong-surface landings, the FAA completed enhancing the ground radar systems at 43 major airports to notify controllers. The ASDE-X Taxiway Arrival Prediction (ATAP) is sophisticated software that predicts when an airplane lines up to land on a taxiway and provides a visual and audible alert to controllers. The FAA finished the software additions last September at airports that have either ASDE-X or the comparable ASSC ground radar systems.</p>
<p>Wrong-surface landings are one of the FAA’s Top 5 safety hazards in the national airspace system (NAS).</p>
<p>“ATAP provides an extra layer of safety for pilots and passengers at airports with multiple parallel runways and taxiways,” said Captain Jeffrey Sedin, airport ground environment chairman with the Air Line Pilots Association.</p>
<p><img alt="Visualization of ATAP." src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:875/1*HiVbudOxhjdIU6BgQFpuFg.jpeg" style="height:519px; width:700px" /></p>
<p>ATAP has helped prevent more than 50 wrong-surface taxiway landings since its first implementation at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in 2018. There have been eight alerts already this year.</p>
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