NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Pilot crossing a runway at a non-towered airport reported a near collision with another aircraft taking off on the same runway.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
After landing on Runway X, made radio call on UNICOM that we had cleared the runway. We were taxiing with bright landing lights and taxi lights, very brightly illuminated, and heard a low volume radio call on UNICOM we believed said the aircraft was 15 miles north and inbound. While taxiing we announced we would be crossing Runway XX-XY on the ground, heard no response, paused to make sure no one was using the runway, when a Piper went by in front of us, apparently taking off on Runway XX. We braked, separation was ~250 ft., the Piper took off successfully. We received no conflict warning on our ADS- B Traffic screen, which was displayed on a MFD (Multifunction Flight Display). While a non- event, a few seconds difference in timing could have resulted in a collision. In retrospect there was a conversation going on in our aircraft that may have interfered with our understanding of the radio call, and the call was very low volume and brief. We also expected activity would be on the runway we had just used (X), and were not expecting a departure on XX. Finally, we are now modifying our behavior to keep a sterile cockpit when a taxi route might possible involve a runway crossing.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Conflict
- Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural
- Ground Incursion
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Airport · Human Factors
- Primary Problem
- Human Factors
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.