Increase in runway mishaps reported

Honolulu Airport saw a slight jump to 14 from nine in the number of runway incidents during the past year involving planes or other vehicles that failed to obey runway rules or instructions.

Two of the 14 Hono­lulu incidents, or "runway incursions," reported in the fiscal year that just ended involved a maintenance truck that was driven onto a runway without permission and a plane that failed to stop at a designated stop line while being towed, said Caro­line Sluy­ter, spokes­woman for the state Department of Transportation.

"Neither of these incidents resulted in a collision or any injuries, but are examples of incursions that have occurred," Sluyter said.

Honolulu Airport had nine such runway incidents in 2010 and again in 2011.

In one of the more recent dramatic cases of a runway incursion in Hono­lulu, in 2009 an F-15 Eagle fighter jet was taxiing when a Boeing 767 pilot landed on Runway 4-R and saw the warplane’s tailpipes in front.

The Boeing pilot had to jam on the breaks to avoid a collision.

But the vast majority of runway incursions in Hono­lulu and across the country aren’t nearly as dramatic, said Ian Gregor, spokes­man for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Pacific Division.

"Most runway incursions do not involve actual intrusions onto runways," Gregor wrote in an email to the Star-Advertiser. "Most involve aircraft or vehicles that cross hold lines known as ‘hold bars’ but do not actually get onto the runway. In other words, if an aircraft taxis five feet over a hold line but is still 195 feet from a runway edge, that’s a runway incursion."

The reported last week that the number of severe runway incidents — in which a collision is narrowly avoided — had fallen to 12 in 2011 from 67 in 2000.

The Times cited data from the Government Accountability Office, an auditing arm of Congress, that showed there were 18 incidents per million domestic flights in 2010, up from 11 incidents per million in 2004.

About a dozen incidents are serious enough each year to warrant an investigation, the Times reported.