The granddaddy of all runway incursions occurred in Tenerife in the Canary Islands when two heavily loaded Boeing 747s came together on a fog-enshrouded runway. The NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System has gathered some impressive statistics on close calls. Pilots and instructors should devote more attention to this little-discussed area. After an average of 220 deviations during each of the last six years, the trend is headed down. In nearly all of the accident cases, weather or darkness played a significant role.
Problems are less likely with good visibility in broad daylight when the hazards can be seen.
The controller had forgotten the Metro and cleared the Boeing to land. The Metro's strobe lights were not on, and the navigation lights weren't spotted by the Boeing crew until a few seconds before impact. The most recent accident occurred in November 1994 at night in St. Louis. A Cessna Conquest was cleared onto a parallel general aviation runway but mistakenly taxied onto the active airline runway about 2,000 feet from the approach end. A McDonnell Douglas MD-80 on its takeoff roll struck the Cessna.