"Position and Hold" to disappear in US?
 

From AVweb.......

Runway Holds Banned?
Taxi-into-position-and-hold (TIPH) (scroll down to 3-9-4) clearances can
speed up operations but they can also put aircraft in direct conflict if
things go awry and recent stirrings suggest the FAA may be moving toward a
nationwide ban on the practice. According to numerous e-mails received by
AVweb, the practice will officially end March 20, but FAA sources weren't
able to confirm that for AVweb prior to this publication. Already
commenting, however, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association says
the ban will have something opposite of the desired effect on safety. NATCA
spokesman Doug Fralick said eliminating TIPH will make it much more
difficult for controllers to judge how much time is needed to ensure the
runway is clear for the next aircraft on approach, ultimately decreasing an
airport's flights-per-hour capacity while adding more variables to a
controller's equation. If the plane taking off is already on the runway and
ready to go, the departure time is easy to predict, but if the next plane in
line has to maneuver onto the runway, perhaps backtrack and get turned
around, seconds can easily turn to minutes and the chance for conflict
grows. "Therefore the likelihood is that spacing on finals will have to be
increased, once again decreasing capacity while at the same time the FAA is
doing all they can to increase capacity," Fralick noted. He also said the
FAA is using a blanket approach to the issue when there are many airports
that have never had a problem caused by TIPH. "The bottom line is that the
loss of TIPH will make the airport environment a more dangerous place than
it was before," Fralick said. "I couldn't imagine not being able to use this
time proven tool."

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive.../588-full.html

taxi into position and hold


maybe, just maybe when the arrival and departure rate goes down, the responsible parties will build more runways and actually create an airport environement capable of growth.

oh well, I'll bet we will hear more, " cleared for IMMEDIATE TAKEOFF OR HOLD SHORT".

j

Why don't we hear ICAO standard.."line up and wait" hear more confusion from US carriers over seas with this phraseology difference (one among 400 or so) after all the US is an ICAO member state...why not standardize???

Or the dicey conditional clearance "behind landing aircraft on final, line up and wait"...

'Line up and wait behind the landing aircraft' is a commonsense procedure and poses no danger as long as both parties understand what is required.

'Position and hold' however has always been an accident waiting to happen
(as indeed it did a few years ago in LA) Controllers can get distracted and
'forget' the holding traffic, especially at night with the aircraft hard to see, (LA) furthermore, in the US, controllers commonly clear aircraft to land with several aircraft ahead of them and/or departing aircraft still on the runway.

A dubious procedure at best...

What's the differene between "Line up and wait", or "Position and hold" it's the same thing... just words is all. True ICAO sets the standards that is generally adopted by the member states and should be uniform globally.
However national aviation agencies are not bound by terms established by ICAO.

It'll certainly have an effect at my local airport (Palo Alto, a little speck of a runway that you see during the left turn to line up with 28L/R at SFO, but one of the busiest GA airports in the US). At busy times when they have 6 or more aircraft in the pattern they have something 2 movements per minute, and anything which slows things down will make sunny Saturday mornings even more of a nightmare than they already are.

Oh well...

n5296s

Twenty years ago, when I was training pre-solo, a BE-18 freighter was cleared into position and hold at my home airport, under heavy IFR conditions.

He sat there for 6 minutes without saying anything. And then an F-4 landed on him. They found his body halfway through the #2 engine. The F-4 crew lived to tell the tale.

Fast forward: I'm in Las Vegas, at night, middle of the SWA arrival swarm, aircraft lined up for 20 miles to land on the left side. They taxi us into position and hold on the right. We sit for 5 minutes. I (the flight engineer) point out to the front enders that if any one of those landing crews pick the wrong runway, we're quite dead. I couldn't even convince them to turn the strobes on until we were rolling.

The moral of the story: it's an o.k. maneuver, I guess, but sit out there for more than a minute and you better be making some noise on the radio, watching your TCAS and listening closely to the landing clearances given. That accident in LAX was a parallel runway situation also....

Didnt really think of position-and-hold as an issue until a couple months back - sat at the end of an unnamed US airport runway for all of 3 minutes before controller relented and let us go. Thank the lord for wipe-clean seats.....

"That accident in LAX was a parallel runway situation also"

Which accident are you referring to? When you say accident I think of my old airline, SkyWest and the USair guppy that landed on top of it.

And at world-class DFW Int'l, Tower controllers used runway 17R, which is very closely spaced with 17C, as an extra taxiway in limited visibility-to park aircraft! := Did the NTSB even fault the Tower Supervisor for dreaming up that brilliant idea?

It was pure luck that an inbound aircraft, which lined up on the wrong runway, landed over and past them on 17R. Never mind the dangers at Midway (MDW), Hou. Hobby (HOU) or Cleveland (CLE), due to dangerous runway layouts and/or length. Providence (PVD) had a dangerous situation develop a few years ago, with fog. Shades of Tenerife.

How many other guys/gals always switch on flood lights when on or even crossing a runway-whether operational or with construction in progress?

As a controller, the only problem I've observed with "taxi into position and hold" (US) is that is has been confused with the (then) ICAO phrase "taxi to the holding position" (Now sensibly replaced with holding point)
There has been occasion when an American pilot has confused "..holding position" with "hold in position". I know of one controller had to order a go-round as a result.
So standardisation can and should be a useful, sensible tool, provided the correct phrases are selected, and phrases used not changed in a whimsical manner, as seems to happen from time to time.
Seen quite a lot of discussion on exact interpretation of some phrases here, which suggest some can be open to interpretation. eg: "Behind the xxx on two mile final line up behind and wait.
(By the way, "wait" need only be used if it is expected there will be a delay to the departing flight)
It all suggests to me that keeping it simple and issuing progressive clearances ranks amongst some of the better safety tools a controller can use.

I disagree, the use of the word "hold" is ambiguous. Why use the verb (ie. "hold") to describe an action when the aircraft is waiting at the noun (ie. "hold"). Use of the phrase "line-up and wait" is unambiguous.

<<Or the dicey conditional clearance "behind landing aircraft on final, line up and wait"...>>

Absolutely nothing "dicey" about this procedure, which I've used hundreds of thousands of times (although in the UK we now say "after...")... but...

<<'Line up and wait behind the landing aircraft' is a commonsense procedure and poses no danger >>

Is immensely dangerous.

Why don't pilots use the correct phraseology?

What Position?
 

Problem is that there is more than one "Position" at an airfield.

As a matter of fact, as has been pointed out on another thread, "position" can be anywhere you are, or are going - as in "Hold position" -ie stop where you are. Then of course, we have the "Holding Position". Quite a salad of opportunites for misunderstandings there.

"Line up" or "Line up and wait" while on the ground, can only really mean on the R/W.

And by the way it was changed to "Line up and Wait" from "Line up and Hold" a few years back to avoid even more confusion.

Hey HUCK,

All thru my 26 years of international (well, most of it was international!), whenever I was on or crossing any active runway, the strobes were always on!
Why not with your boys?

Cheers FD :ugh:

HD asked, "Why don't pilots use the correct phraseology?". I've often wondered the same.

I was in the traffic pattern at a regional airfield just last week and saw a fractional ownership biz. jet waiting at the "Holding Point".

AS the landing aircraft crossed the threshold in front of the jet, ATC said "XXXX taxi into position and hold". The flight crew came back, in cheery voice, with "We're on the hold"

WTF does that mean?

I don't know, but never had a problem with the word "hold" either. Now the term "holding position" is not a term used in the US. Controllers in the US come out right and say hold short of the ILS/CAT III A line. which is more direct than hold point. But hey.... its all about semantics... isn't it?

Thats why airlines have a director of flight standards... SOPs

"Why not with your boys?"

Every time I crossed a runway they were on. While not universal, I see a large number of my fellow US pilots do the same.

How about just "Line up". ???