The U.S. saw an average of 13 potentially catastrophic runway accidents per year from 2000-2009. That period coincided with an era of reduced flights after 9/11 and during the recession. Traffic is now expected to pick up over the next decade with an estimated 3 percent more flights annually.

“By being alert to this [new rule], [pilots] are much less likely to have a problem,” Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) Foundation President Bruce Landsberg said in a video posted at AOPA. Here’s Landsberg on the new rules and runway incursions in general:

The two reasons pilots have problems with runway incursions is either because they’re complacent. They’ve done it many many times – we are creatures of habit – or they’re distracted…

You have to say, “My job, right now, 100 percent is getting where the airplane where it is now now to wherever it is I’m going, either on the outbound leg or the inbound leg…”

Many of the areas where we have incursions, they don’t just happen to new pilots. They happen to very experienced pilots. Because

The CBC reports that the pilot might have landed too far down the runway for the breaks to stop the plane before reportedly losing the front wheel and sliding on to the grass. Weather might also have been a factor, as light rain had been reported since late morning. The NTSB is sending a team to help assist the Transportation Safety Board of Canada with its investigation.

The exact factors which caused this runway accident are unlikely to come to light for months when an investigation is finalized. But what is clear today is that this incident will be added to the year’s growing tally of runway safety accidents and incidents, what aviation safety experts call runway incursions. Technically this incident was a runway excursion, when a plane leaves the runway during takeoff or landing, and this is the type of runway-related incident that makes up about 97 percent of all runway safety accidents according to a 2009 Flight Safety Foundation study. 

The problem of runway excursions is so substantial that the NTSB added a recommendation to it’s Most Wanted List of transportation safety improvements in 2007, as soon as it was issued. The NTSB wants the FAA to require all pilots to calculate an arrival landing distance assessment before every landing based on actual conditions expected at the time of landing, a la the rain at Ottawa’s airport today.

Evidence suggests that as air traffic grows, the number of runway incursions grow exponentially. As air traffic is expected to grow by an estimated 3 percent annually over the next few years. Suffice it to say this has experts, the Air Line Pilots Union, and the NTSB worried about runway accidents.  

Are you a pilot with a story to tell about an incursion? What do you think about the NTSB’s recommendation? Want to sound off on this issue? Leave us a comment or email Richard.Duchon@News21.com. And check out the other interesting stories we’re working on below.