Yesterday, the Airports Council International – North America (ACI-NA) briefed reporters on the current situation of runway incursions, overruns, apron safety and other hot topics affecting the nation’s airports. ACI-NA discussed opportunities, both near-term actions and far-term actions, that could help reduce the amount of incursions that are occurring. During a recent “Call to Action” ACI-NA urged airports to accelerate action to enhance surface markings, employ recurrent driver training and pilot taxi training, enhance taxi checklist reviews and review air traffic control taxi clearances. The enhanced markings were mandatory at 75 large national airports by June 2008, but 71 of the 75 have already completed them. Longer-term actions include ADS-B/OUT NPRM to be published, which, in addition to enabling surface moving maps, will address “wrong runway” issues. When discussing apron safety, Dick Marchi, senior advisor, policy and regulatory affairs for ACI-NA, mentioned that U.S. carriers typically handled apron safety, whereas in the rest of the world the airport typically handles these issues. Marchi also said that the FAA hasn’t set a date yet to regulate apron safety, but is telling airports to prepare for some type of upcoming regulations. ACI-NA will attend the upcoming House Subcommittee hearing on runway safety that will be held on February 13, 2008. MORE