With runway excursions and incursions remaining among aviation’s top safety risk categories, ICAO and its global runway safety partnering organizations met in Lima, Peru, late last month to agree on developing a new Global Runway Safety Action Plan.

The plan will “guide the integrated activities of states, airports, airlines, operators and manufacturers to implement runway safety improvement and risk-reduction measures, with an overall objective of reducing runway safety related accident fatalities and costs,” said ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu.

“Regardless of the success achieved thus far, [runway accident and incident] numbers still reveal for us that we have more work to do to fully mitigate runway-related risks,” Liu emphasized. “That helps explain why ICAO has brought the world’s runway safety specialists [together] for our second Global Runway Safety Symposium. And we’re encouraged by the outcome of this new action plan, which will drive improved runway safety risk mitigation over the next five years.”

The agreement to develop the ICAO-led plan follows the recent release of Eurocontrol’s version 3.0 of the European Action Plan for the Prevention of Runway Incursions, which contains new guidance and modifications to existing recommendations to refocus and re-energize ongoing action across the aviation industry. “It is shown that there continues to be a minimum of two runway incursions every day in the European region,” Eurocontrol said.