Research Question and Hypothesis
As a result of the continued, multi-faceted threat that runway incursions pose to the safety of many aviation users despite longstanding efforts to diminish their incidence, acase study analysis of incursion data archived within the NTSB’s and NASA’s databases sought to determine the positive or negative correlations between incursions and several situational factors. With 3,888 runway incursions compromising the safety of pilots, passengers, and airport personnel between fiscal years 2013 and 2015, answering the following questions aimed to refine the aviation industry’s collective understanding of the conditions that were more favorable forincursions.
Research Question #1
What are the correlations between times of day and the reported runway incursions that occurred between January 2013 and December of 2015?
Research Question #2
What is the correlation between air traffic control towers and the reported runway incursions that occurred between January 2013 and December of 2015?
Hypothesis #1
The decreasing rate of serious runway incursions is caused by a corresponding negative trend in the determination of severity of similar incursions over time.
Hypothesis #2
A large number of pilots would recognize circumstances such as high speeds and intersecting paths as allowing little or no time for collision avoidance. A significant minority of pilots would identify those situations as meeting the definition of a serious runway incursion regardless of horizontal separation.