What’s the issue?

Runway Excursions are THE most frequent accident type in aviation.

They make up around 23% of accidents! The majority occur on landing – around 79% – with 63% of these being overruns, and 37% veer offs (going off the side instead of the end), For take-offs, veer offs happen more, at around 53%, and overruns around 47%.

But here’s the thing… a lot of them, according to the investigations, were pretty much completely avoidable.

So, why do they keep happening?

Well, maybe ‘How?’ is the better question to ask. Investigations suggest a whole combination of threats which can factor into these, with the mains ones being:

Threats

• Airport Facilities (stuff like runway surface type, lights etc)
• Meteorology (weather)
• Winds/ Windshear/ Gusts (gets its own section because a big factor!)
• Contaminated runways or poor braking action
• Thunderstorms (and all the mean things which go with them)

Errors

• Manual handling
• SOPs
• Not going around when not stabilised

UAS

• Abnormal landing (floating, not decrabbing, long, off-centre…)
• Unstable
• Getting involved with weather you should not get involved with
• Speed deviations

But it is generally a combination of several of these which leads to an excursion!

Let’s talk about those combinations

Landing 10 knots faster than we should can lead to a 20% increase in our actual landing distance. Same if you throw in a 10 knots TW. So a shorter runway with a trend for wind changing, or a steeper than normal approach could result in an overrun.

If you combine a lack of centre line lights which a strong crosswind, reduced visibility due to rain or night time then you could be looking at a veer off.

How about an airport which sees a lot of monsoon type weather – so potential moderate to heavy rain – and which also has an ungrooved runway? The impact of an increase to moderate rain can result in a much higher risk of hydroplaning.

In these we see examples of:

• Meteorological threats (rain)
• Airport facilities (centreline lights, runway length, steep approach, ungrooved runway)
• Wind (crosswind)
• Factors which can lead to UAS (shorter runway/lack of lights (black hole effect?), steeper approach)

The trouble with combinations of factors is it is hard to assess these in the moment.

So what can you do?

Well, this is one of the reasons I created the Airport OGRE.

The idea is to familiarise yourself with aspects like airport facilities, factors which could impact you, trends and common weather and wind challenges so that you are aware of them and can mitigate where possible.

The Airport OGRE has you work through 6 areas:

• Airfield Facilities & Capabilities
• Ground Factors
• Operational Factors
• Surrounding Environment
• Weather & Conditions
• General

By working through, you can identify potential threats and hazards, and consider whether these might factor into possibly UAS or errors. It will provide you with an OGRE rating (overall risk rating) and show you how many factors could potentially contribute to the major accident categories – including Runway Excursion (RE).

It will also suggest some possible mitigations – these are just some suggestions. The report at the end is intended to aid you in self TEM briefings, so you can review mitigations, and factor combinations. Basically, so you can prepare for some possible events.

Ungrooved runways plus reduced rain can massively reduce performance!

For example…

You identify an airport which has multiple runways with changeable weather conditions. Some of the runways have offset approaches, others have displaced thresholds. This might suggest to you the possibility of late runway changes, and differing performance (ALD) on runways.

So, how does that help? Well, on heading in, you pull out your OGRE report. It has a lot of points for potential RE. It lists all these threats you identified.

Now you can:

• Brief the other pilot and prepare/plan for possibilities
• Run the performance for the worst case conditions or runway so you’re prepared
• Look over the potential runways and brief for them in advance so you’ve “made time” if you do get a runway change
• Know to monitor the weather for changes or trends which might suggest it could worsen
• Thinks about how it will look visually if offset, and how you would handle this in a crosswind
• Consider the displaced threshold, what it means for performance and the “picture’ on landing (to help avoid abnormal landing)
• Self-review how you’ll handle the aircraft for the specific conditions
• Run through the SOPs and procedures specific to it for a more cognitive, threat forward, scalable briefing

Where can you get it?

The Airport OGRE is available in the Apple Store and Google Play store. And it’s absolutely free.

Will it prevent you from ever making a mistake? Absolutely not!

Could it help increase your awareness, adaptability and resilience? That’s the aim!