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An ambitious action plan to reduce the number of runway excursions in Europe has been released by EUROCONTROL today. This plan, called European Action Plan for the Prevention of Runway Excursions (EAPPRE), includes provisions for airline pilots to be closely involved in identifying potential runway safety issues and working on means to mitigate runway safety deficiencies at a local level. The action plan provides a comprehensive set of stakeholder-specific guidelines and recommendations on how to reduce the number of runway excursions.

“With at least two runway excursions per week worldwide, there is an urgent need to scale up action against this kind of safety events. The plan offers a strong response to this growing concern and I am pleased that ECA experts have very closely cooperated with EUROCONTROL and many other aviation stakeholders to come up with this action plan”, said ECA President, Nico Voorbach. “This is an important step toward substantially reducing these events. Now we must work on a comprehensive and diligent implementation of the action plan according to schedule”.

The action plan builds on the expertise provided by a wide-range of organisations representing all areas of runway operations. It outlines a firm commitment to prevent runway excursions using all practicable means available ranging from the design of aircraft, airspace, procedures and technologies to relevant training for operational staff and pilot training programmes based on realistic scenarios.

“A key pillar of the action plan is making the best possible use of Local Runway Safety Teams, LRST, that will monitor closely the local aerodrome, identify issues and take action if local runway safety issues arise”, says Álvaro Gammicchia, Executive Board Director for Technical Affairs of ECA. “The LRST will also include pilots from the local pilot associations whose expertise builds upon their day-to-day operations and this experience will be instrumental for a successful implementation.”


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For further information, please contact:
Nico Voorbach, ECA President, Tel: +32 491 378 982
Philip von Schöppenthau, ECA Secretary General, Tel: +32 2 705 32 93

 

 

Download the press release here and Download the European action plan on EUROCONTROL's website