Runway conflict alerting : advisory or directive?

Abstract

Runway conflicts pose a significant threat to continued safety in commercial aviation. In recent years, stakeholders have initiated a number of programmes dealing with the issue of runway incursions, with the majority adopting traditional advisory alerting techniques. In contrast, this work proposes the use of directive cockpit alerting, which provides both an alert of the conflict as well as guidance on which manoeuvre to conduct to clear the conflict. This article reports the findings of simulator trials that have been conducted to assess the effectiveness and acceptability of a directive alerting strategy within the context of runway incursions. Statistical analysis performed on the quantitative measures taken from the evaluations have shown that the directive mode of alerting leads to a higher probability of the crew performing the correct action when faced with an alert. This, together with overall participant acceptance of the directive alerting concept, is a strong indicator that the technique has the potential of providing a complete solution to the problem of runway incursions.