2007 San Francisco International Airport Runway Incursion - Investigation

Investigation

Runway safety has been a priority concern for both the FAA and NTSB. In a March 23, 2007 press conference on runway safety the FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey described the Tenerife disaster 30 years earlier as a "wake-up" call. Runway safety has been on the NTSB's annual list of "Most Wanted Improvements" continuously since 1990, and the NTSB held a one-day forum on runway incursions just two months earlier, on March 27, 2007.

In this case, the FAA categorized the incident's severity as "Category A", the most severe; Category A is defined as when "separation decreases and participants take extreme action to narrowly avoid a collision, or the event results in a collision." Of the previous 15 runway incursions at SFO between 2001 and 2007, none of them were more serious than Category C, defined as the situation where "separation decreases but there is ample time and distance to avoid a potential collision".

Commenting on the seriousness of the incident, NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz noted that "We investigate probably just a handful (of incursions) a year." The NTSB officials have stated that the investigation could be completed by Fall. However, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor was quoted as saying "This wasn't a procedural issue, this was caused by a good controller with a lot of experience making a mistake", adding that since the incursion the controller had to be recertified for their job. The controller had over 20 years' experience.