Runway incursion avoidance
Hot spots, hold-short lines, LAHSO, and sterile taxi discipline.
12 min read · Airport operations and procedures
After this lesson you can
- Define a runway incursion and name the three leading causal factors behind them.
- Read back a hold-short and runway-crossing instruction correctly, and know when a "line up and wait" is not a takeoff clearance.
- Decide when to accept or decline a LAHSO clearance.
- Apply clearing procedures and a taxi discipline that keeps attention outside the airplane.
Roughly three runway incursions happen every day at towered airports in the United States. Most of them do not end in a collision, which is exactly what makes them easy to underestimate: the margin that saves them is often luck, not planning.
FAA data attributes about 65 percent of runway incursions to pilots, and almost half of those pilot-caused events involve general aviation. This lesson is about closing that gap: the habits that keep a taxi clearance, a hold-short line, and a runway crossing from turning into a surprise for someone else.
The rest of this lesson
- 1.What a runway incursion is
- 2.Where incursions come from
- 3.Hold short and runway crossing discipline
- 4.LAHSO: accept or decline
- 5."Line up and wait" is not a takeoff clearance
- 6.The lights that tell you the runway is not yours
- 7.Taxi discipline and clearing procedures
- 8.Taxiing at night and in low visibility, and the instruction you expected to hear
These 8 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the PPL track. Paid once, yours for good.
Key terms
Try to recall each definition before turning the card.