Posts about stuff relating to airports
Expanding Safety Performance Indicators for Wildlife Hazard Management
Recently, I was invited to speak “at” an airport safety conference on the topic of birds and habitat management. The presentation I delivered was an extension of a previous article I wrote about safety performance indicators with a twist towards wildlife hazard management in particular. The conference organisers have now shared the videos of their program for free but I’ve got the bit with me included here.
Image credit: Christina Morillo (via Pexels)
Listening to Real-World Radio Communications
I have a confession to make. When my family is travelling or even just late at night after they go to bed, I will cue up video after video of …
Real-world air traffic control recordings.
They provide great insight into accident and incident response - both good and bad. Or sometimes, they just provide some welcome comic relief in the most avgeek kind of way.
Image credit: (cc) Guilherme Rossi on Pexels
Visualising Jet Blast
Sometimes circumstances align to create a video that gives a perfect opportunity to see something that is usually not visible. In this case, it was a good dusting of dry snow, an aircraft parking in the right spot near a guy in the terminal also in the right spot at the right time.
Turnaround Time-lapse
Last year, I was traveling around New Zealand filming “ride-along” videos with people from airport-based organisations that have personnel driving airside. This was as part of my smarter airside drivers program under the Jilly Murphy Scholarship.
Video: Taxiway Collision in Turkey
A long, long time ago, I almost jokingly suggested that we should be looking at Taxiway Safety as much as Runway Safety. But in the nearly seven years since I posted it, I've seen a steady stream of taxiway collisions across the world. The latest in Turkey provided some spectacular visuals and luckily no one was hurt.
Image credit: pixabay
Alternative Vehicle Marking Options
While I'm not a fan, the Australian MOS 139 does permit the marking of vehicle operating on the manoeuvring area with a flag. I haven't seen one in the wild but this video caught my eye the other night.
Someone is always watching...
Airports are at the nexus of high visibility and idle time. We invite people to transit through our facilities. We provide windows for them to watch the action. We make them wait (hopefully not too long).
Header image: Oleg Magni (via Pexels)
Airport Heavy Metal
For those engineers, works supervisors and general road-works warriors out there, here is a cool new video of trucks, asphalt, men and some more trucks as they overlay one of Melbourne Airport's runways. Enjoy :).
FODtube.com*
Last week's post on Foreign Object Debris got me surfing youtube.com for some videos: First up is a short video on some of Denver Airport's FOD control activities - pretty low tech stuff but they appear happy with it.
Next Global Initiative: Taxiway Safety?
Last month I mentioned the widespread attention being paid to runway safety (runway incursions, excursions etc.) but over the last few months, and the last few weeks in particular, we've had quite a few high-profile taxiway accidents. So much so that maybe the next global safety initiative will be taxiway safety (excursions, clearances, traffic etc.). Recent Boo-boos
Image credit: Marina Hinic
Unusual Wildlife Hazards Update
It appears that the reptilian conspiracy is real and it intends on shutting down the world's airports. First, it was geckos in the Australian outback and now its turtles in New York!
Image credit: David Dibert (via Pexels)
Spending time with our ATC cousins
i only occasionally get to spend time with the ATC community but last week offered one of those chances. My co-facilitator in Jakarta was Tim Abberton, a very experienced "airservices" ATC'er and safety guru and at least half the course were members of the Indonesian DGCA's Directorate of Air Navigation. The combined course was an excellent opportunity for the airport and air navigation worlds to work together as well as compare and contrast their approaches to similar problems.
Header image: Media Design and Media Publishing (via Pixabay)
Low Visibility Operations
Greetings from Jakarta! Tomorrow I'll be facilitating a training workshop which is tasked with a risk-based review of low visibility standards. To be honest, I'm really looking forward to it. To help with the workshop, I've been surfing youtube looking for videos of low visibility operations and I thought this one was one of the best.
St. Barth's Airport
On the face of it, no Australian airport should ever have obstacle problems. I mean, look at the space we have! But of course, we have the odd hill and good ol' urban encroachment means that some airports are struggling with obstacle control. Nothing like St Barth's airport though...
Topic of the Month: Runway Safety
The stories surrounding runway safety (i.e. runway incursions, excursions etc.) have been coming out steadily in the lead up to and following the global runway safety symposium. The stats formed the call to action and the responses have included the technological, the educational, the multi-disciplinary and the collaborative.
Apron Rampage
This story, to me at least, falls well into the security sphere which I tend to consider somewhat separate from safety. The difference between the two would make for an interesting discussion (maybe one to revisit later) but I usually consider security to encompass events involving an agent from outside of the aviation system intent on causing harm to it or within it. Of course there are exceptions to aspects of my definition - for example the security threat may come from the inside and the issues surrounding such events may straddle the security/safety disciplines.
Classic: Jet Engine v Car
Not as "exciting" as the some other ones but still very enlightening...
Is this how the world sees us?
The Simpsons betrayed me…
Header image: David Seibold (via Flickr)