Driving your car the wrong way on a one-way street can lead to a bad day, as well as angry honks from oncoming vehicles, a possible fender-bender, and maybe a traffic ticket. But if you misread the signs and markings at the airport, and the outcome could be incredibly expensive, disastrous, or even deadly.
Things get decidedly more complex, and the consequences more dire, while navigating taxiways, runways, and other specially designated areas at larger and busier controlled airports. For pilots, it's always a good idea to refresh your safety knowledge before stepping back into the cockpit, especially when it comes to airport markings and signs.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, out of 54.4 million takeoffs and landings in 2023, there were 1,756 runway incursions. About 60 percent of those were attributable to pilot deviations. (For those keeping score, the DOT ranks incursions in four categories, with Category A meaning a serious incident in which a collision was narrowly avoided, and Category D meaning an incident, possibly involving just one aircraft, that did not result in immediate safety consequences.)
While this may not sound like a large number (and, happily, the 2023 statistics were a bit down from 2022), the numbers won’t matter to the pilot who fails to stop before entering or crossing an active runway--except, maybe, for the phone number Ground gives you to call after you’ve parked your plane.
In the AIRPORT unit of ARSim, you’ll learn that airport signs and markings come in six flavors: mandatory instruction signs, location signs, direction signs, destination signs, information signs, and runway distance remaining signs. You’ll also learn about airport lighting, which is especially critical if you do any night flying.
Because we generally learn better by doing than by simply reading, you’ll have ample opportunities to test your knowledge through a series of interactive quizzes as you progress through this module.
We think you’ll find our AIRPORT training unit a practical and interactive way to learn and refresh your understanding of airport signs, markings, and lighting. This foundational knowledge (which draws from this helpful FAA publication) can not only increase your situational awareness and safety but ensure you don’t become a statistic in next year’s DOT report.
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