Beginning May 19, 2022, the Hot Spots on FAA charts will have three shapes with two distinct meanings. The Hot Spot symbology will be standardized, and a new Arrival Alert Notice also will be released, according to FAA officials.
The changes are in response to concerns from the FAA’s Runway Safety team about how many pilots have misaligned to and even landed on or departed from a wrong runway, taxiway, and even a wrong airport.
The new symbols and alerts will be discussed during a May 16, 2022, live broadcast of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI)’s MentorLive.
“Surface safety continues to be a high priority for the FAA,” said Christine Madden, FAA Runway Safety Program Manager. “During this broadcast, my colleague Ray German, Eastern Service Area Team Manager, and I will share what we’re seeing with these events as we present these new and improved tools to help increase aviators’ situational awareness. The FAA would value any help in spreading the word about these important changes and new tools.”
Hot spot identification is essential for pilots, particularly during preflight planning and while taxiing on airport surfaces. However, hot spots are currently depicted in a variety of shapes with no particular meaning.
On May 19, hot spots on the FAA’s aeronautical charts and publications will have three shapes with two distinct meanings. Circles or ellipses will depict ground movement surface safety risk areas like taxiway/runway configurations and intersections. A cylinder will highlight wrong surface event risk areas, such as offset parallel runways, a nemesis for all pilots, FAA officials said.
The FAA’s Runway Safety Group also worked collaboratively with agency officials and the aviation industry to develop a visual enhancement tool to help pilots with runway confusion at certain airport locations
These new Arrival Alert Notices offer a visual aid to pilots to enhance situational awareness when a Wrong Surface Hot Spot related to Arrivals is identified. There are 11 airports with Arrival Alert Notices which will be evaluated over a one-year test period, FAA officials noted.
To register for NAFI MentorLIVE, go to MentorLive.site.
To learn more about airport diagrams and view the Runway Safety Hot Spots list, click here.
Looks like the FAA got it wrong again. A “cylinder” is a 3-dimensional shape and is not the racetrack-like shape they have shown for Wrong Surface Hot Spots”. What they have shown is a “stadium” or “disco rectangle”.
A stadium, also called a discorectangle, obround, or sausage body, is a geometric figure consisting of a rectangle with top and bottom lengths whose ends are capped off with semicircles of radius .