Treat Runway Signs, Lights, SOPs as One System

Business aircraft pilots continue to pursue the highest safety standards during ground operations as well as in the air. Safeguards such as runway guard lights, standardized signage, pavement markings and surface lighting remain some of the most dependable defenses against runway incursions.

However, these guides are only one layer in a larger safety framework. “Pilot training is what turns those cues into reliable behavior under workload, which is why operators need to treat signage, lighting and SOPs as one system instead of three separate checkboxes,” explained Latitude 33 Aviation Director of Maintenance James Logue.

CAE Vice President, Global Civil Training Solutions Tim Schoenauer points out that “standardization is important for business aviation, where crews routinely operate into smaller or foreign aerodromes, often with limited ATC staffing, mixed traffic or non-towered environments. When signage and markings are ICAO-compliant, they significantly reduce ambiguity during taxi, especially for crews unfamiliar with local layouts.”

Signage and Lighting Advances

The FAA deploys runway status lights (RSLs), including runway entrance lights (RELs) and takeoff hold lights (THLs), to improve visibility and reduce runway incursion risk at busy airports. These are different from guard lights because they’re automated and tied to live surveillance.

“RELs and THLs put a red stop cue right at the decision point when visibility is poor and your normal scan is degraded,” said Logue. “The training piece is simple but critical: Red means stop, even if your clearance says go, and that takes recurrent emphasis to stick.”

Even so, the industry still needs technology. Schoenauer noted that, while RSLs are most common at major U.S. airports, they remain highly relevant globally. Business aircraft crews operate in congested, mixed-traffic environments across varied platforms and regulations, and RSLs provide consistent, aircraft-agnostic safety information regardless of operator or onboard equipage.

Emerging Technologies

How effective are the FAA’s Surface Awareness Initiative (SAI), Universal Taxi Assist (UTA) for electronic flight bags (EFBs), or flight deck alerts such as Honeywell’s SURF-A (Surf Alert) in preventing runway incursions?

“These tools excel in complex, unfamiliar or low-visibility environments by turning airport data into intuitive, geo-referenced cues,” said Schoenauer. EFB solutions improve situational awareness of taxi routes and hot spots, while systems such as SURF-A deliver predictive alerts for runway conflicts or wrong-runway departures during high-workload phases.

Logue believes tools like Garmin SafeTaxi, SAI and UTA and systems such as SURF-A target the gap: runway collision risk. SafeTaxi, common in flight decks and EFBs, improves taxi briefing and hotspot awareness but does not provide maneuver authority. SURF-A advances safety by delivering alerts of runway occupancy without controller input. Operators should align upgrades with avionics work, train crews on alert types and integrate data currency into SMS.

SURF-A provides pilots with clear and timely alerts so they can recognize threats and avoid runway collisions during takeoff and landing, said Honeywell Aerospace Chief Test Pilot Josh Lewis. “Recent incidents and near-misses highlight the need for this runway-incursion prevention system,” Lewis said. “Pilots, air traffic controllers, passengers and flight safety professionals all agree: This new vital safety layer can’t come fast enough to the cockpit.”

Review NBAA runway safety resources at nbaa.org/runway-safety.