Kerry Lynch stepped into the role of editor of the&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;monthly magazine in May 2022 after serving with&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;for eight years. She joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in December 2014 as a senior editor covering Washington and business aviation news. She has also served on Convention News teams, including as editor of&nbsp;HAI Convention News. Lynch previously spent 25 years with Aviation Week. During her time there, she reported for and later steered&nbsp;The Weekly of Business Aviation, oversaw business aviation content on the&nbsp;Aviation Week Intelligence Network, served on the&nbsp;Show News&nbsp;staff, and held roles as the Washington columnist for&nbsp;Business &amp; Commercial Aviation&nbsp;and&nbsp;Overhaul &amp; Maintenance&nbsp;monthly magazines. In 2021 she was honored with the National Business Aviation Association Platinum Wing Award for lifetime achievement in journalism and was the 2004 recipient of the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalism Excellence Award. She also has been a recipient of an Aerospace Media Award for business aviation (2022) and NBAA Gold Wing Award (2003, 2024). Lynch graduated from The Ohio State University with a bachelor of arts in journalism.

Editor, AIN monthly magazine

Kerry Lynch

Operators can take concrete steps to enhance procedures surrounding winds, stabilized approaches, and wet runway conditions to guard against runway excursions, advised Advanced Aircrew Academy CEO Dan Boedigheimer. Hosting a workshop during the Bombardier Safety Standdown last week, Boedigheimer delved into key factors surrounding runway excursions and how organizations can help reinforce their operations to prepare for those factors.
He looked at both accidents and incidents involving excursions to derive trends, tracing about one per week on average. “Thankfully, most of them aren't considered accidents,” he noted.
The last primary research on business aircraft excursions, conducted by the National Aerospace Laboratory of the Netherlands, pointed to wet/contaminated runways as one of the most frequent causal factors, Boedigheimer said. Separate but adding to that is hydroplaning.
Another pattern involved winds, more specifically both crosswinds and tailwinds. Others pointed to approach/landing decisions and areas such as speed, landing long, and high on approach.
In determining prevention, Boedigheimer said, he employs what he called an “STLI” model, or questioning whether there is a standard in place, whether there is adequate training for that standard, whether the leadership supports it, and whether the individual follows the standard.
He challenged attendees to take on four major tasks to address risks and hazards associated with winds, wet runways, and unstabilized approaches.
The first surrounded addressing dynamic wind situations. “What can you do to improve the guidance within your operations manual?” he said, further asking what the steps are that could “just [raise] that awareness of what are the current wind conditions related to that approaching storm.”
He questioned whether operators have a time-of-arrival assessment procedure, typically done at the top of the descent. “It's not going to catch that 4-knot change to a 53-knot gust, right? But at least at the top of descent, you can identify whether conditions have changed since I last updated the weather before I departed or got an update mid-flight,” Boedigheimer maintained. “And if you identify these changing conditions, then it's just a spotlight to say, let's key in on that.”
He further suggested that operators look at their guidance related to operations around convective activity. “Do you have a mileage that you'll operate within? If not, is there heightened awareness, are there briefings? Are there additional things that you'll do to raise that awareness of operating around those hazards?”
A second task he stressed surrounds the aircraft limitations. This involves ensuring the crew knows and considers aircraft limitations with winds. He noted that checklists often enable crews to practice for “routine” emergencies but questioned whether crews practice for “non-routine” emergencies—something novel that happens in the aircraft.
“We're horrible at making decisions when there's not discretionary time,” he said. “When we have to make a decision in a finite amount of time, we haven't been trained for it, and we don't have a procedure to follow, we're not good at making decisions to apply this to this scenario.”
Having the knowledge and procedures helps push decision-making to an “if/then” scenario. “All you have to do is recognize [...] if I have a gust, then I'm going to do this. If the runway is icy and there's a tailwind, then I'm not going to operate there rather than have us go through that decision-making as a crew in real-time without the discretionary time. The more decisions that we can move from high-workload management situations to if/then decisions, that really improves our decision-making amongst the crew.”
The third major task surrounds stabilized approach criteria. He questioned whether operators have a standard in place. “There isn’t a regulation for stabilized approach criteria,” he noted, and further asked if operators have standards, whether they are trained on it, and whether the leadership supports it.
Also, do crews have a commit-to-stop time, assessing the speed and distance remaining and committing to when a go/no-go decision must be made? He noted that the NTSB put out information on commit to stop, saying this should be predetermined.
Boedigheimer pointed to a Flight Safety Foundation study that found that in 97% of unstabilized approaches, the crews were not going around. “If 97% of the time, you don’t go around when the approach is unstabilized, we’ve probably got a bad standard,” he remarked.
A fourth task involved preparation surrounding wet or contaminated runways—which was by far the most common causal factor in excursions.
“How are you going to operate on wet or contaminated runways,” he asked, citing as an example preparing for snow on runways. “Maybe [a crew] is a minute or two from landing and they're getting information that there's snow unplowed on the runway. That's a horrible time to get that information to make your decision.”
Have crews calculated the landing distance? What is the level of confidence of the information provided on where they are landing, and do they know where to call to get what he called “local” knowledge of what is going on there? Do crews know whether a runway is grooved, providing a better ability to shed water?
“That's one thing I always look for in my preflight planning, whether it's forecast to possibly be wet and taking a look at [if] the runway [is] grooved or not,” Boedigheimer said. “A lot of the runway excursions happen on runways that are not grooved and also [crews] don't anticipate there's going be wet.”
Thunderstorms can crop up, and crews can’t rely on the notam system for that information.
He pointed to FAA guidance that crews should add an additional safety margin of at least 15% in actual landing distance except in emergencies.
“So, use your actual landing distance, whether the runway is wet or contaminated, plus add 15% to it,” he said. “And the FAA is saying that unless it's an emergency, we don't want to hear that you're not adding that 15% to it.”

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