FAAST Blast — New Tech to Improve Surface Safety, Pilot Minute Video Covers Cold Stress, Expanding Your Envelope with Weather

FAAST Blast — Week of March 18 - 24, 2024
Biweekly FAA Safety Briefing News Update
 

FAA Rolls Out New Technology to Improve Airport Surface Safety

The FAA announced it is launching a new surface safety tool, called Approach Runway Verification (ARV), at air traffic control towers across the nation to improve safety at airports. ARV provides controllers with visual and audible alerts if an approaching aircraft is lined up to land on the wrong airport surface, or even the wrong airport.

ARV is currently installed at towers that service:

• Austin (AUS)
• Lincoln Tower (LNK)
• Elton Hensley (FTT)
• Lansing (LAN)
• DuPage (DPA)
• Chicago Executive (PWK)
• Tallahassee (TLH)
• Cedar Rapids (CID)
• Branson West Municipal (FWB)
• Gerald Ford International (GRR)
• Elkhart Municipal (EKM)
• South Bend (SBN)
• M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport (PLK)

The agency will deploy ARV at other facilities across the nation throughout the rest of the year and into 2025. For more information, visit https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-rolls-out-new-technology-controllers-improve-surface-safety-nations-airports.

New Pilot Minute Video: How Being Too Cold Can Affect Your Flying

In the latest episode of the FAA’s Pilot Minute video series, Federal Air Surgeon Dr. Susan Northrup explains the physiological impacts of hypothermia, how cold stress can impact piloting capability, and how to prevent it. See this and past Pilot Minute videos here: https://bit.ly/PilotMinute.

Expanding Your Envelope with Weather

Given their unique flight characteristics, like being susceptible to winds and without an engine or mechanical directional control, balloons truly are a part of weather. That’s why it’s important for balloon pilots to understand weather on a small scale. The slightest miscalculation on winds, fog, clouds, or thunderstorms puts a balloon at risk of an accident. For a look at some microscale resources that provide balloonists the additional safety data needed for safe flight — and which may also benefit aviators in any aircraft type — have a look at the article “Expanding the Envelope with Aviation Weather” at https://medium.com/faa/expanding-the-envelope-with-aviation-weather-5cc5a62958c9 in the Mar/Apr 2024 issue of the FAA Safety Briefing. See the entire weather-themed issue at www.faa.gov/safety_briefing.

Produced by the FAA Safety Briefing editors: www.faa.gov/safety_briefing
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