ATSB Executive Director, Transport Safety, Mr Nat Nagy said the incident demonstrates how the subjective nature of runway surface reports and braking actions reports can contribute to the risk of a runway excursion.
“There is little standardisation between how pilots, industry and regulators describe runway surface conditions,” Mr Nagy said. “Information provided to pilots is often from multiple sources, with undefined terminology that may only be relevant to a certain time or type of aircraft.
“To overcome this, the International Civil Aviation Organization will be adopting the United States Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) runway condition assessment matrix in November 2020.”
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) have advised the ATSB they anticipate aligning their runway condition definitions with ICAO post 2020.
“Until then, pilots are advised to apply a conservative approach when relying other pilot reports for runway surface conditions, in particular, when the conditions are considered damp,” Mr Nagy said.
Additionally the ATSB found, along with the FAA, that the 15 per cent in-flight safety margin applied to actual landing distances may be inadequate under certain runway conditions. CASA has advised they intend to evaluate this finding and update the corresponding advisory material accordingly.