Originally published at: FAA Seeks Input on Cost-Effective Runway Safety Lights - AVweb
Agency aims to expand runway safety systems to more airports within three years.
The FAA expects that there are commercial off the shelf runway and taxiway lights available, manufactured for the fashion show and Ms. America Pageant runways perhaps? And that they would be deployable in 3 months. Hopefully they are planning on certifying the new system, which will incorporate a new method of detecting runway occupancy and a new method of communicating go/no-go to pilots and ground vehicle drivers. Will we then have two different systems, the existing system at 20 airports and the new system at the remainder that need one? Or will they dismantle the 20 existing systems?
The existing lighting system gets its inputs from surface movement, approach path monitoring, etc. equipment. I don’t know how different those detection systems are from the Canadian RIMCAS (Runway Incursion Monitoring and Conflict Alert System), which has failed to warn of simultaneous use of the runway by multiple aircraft at least twice at Toronto’s Pearson airport. Oddly, the root cause is not within those systems, but in the design of TCAS.
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