The International Air Transport Association (IATA), the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO) and Airports Council International (ACI) have launched a joint runway safety initiative, according to the organisations’ 28 July 2026 announcement. The programme is aimed at reducing runway incursions—the presence of an aircraft, vehicle or person where it should not be on a runway or its protected area—through more consistent reporting, stronger local coordination and wider sharing of lessons.
Three priorities in the announcement
The first priority is better safety reporting and data capture. The partners say this should cover not only incidents but also near misses, precursor events and observations from frontline personnel. That matters because runway risk can surface before an occurrence becomes an accident; however, the announcement does not publish a new global dataset or a numerical target. Its stated focus is on creating a fuller picture of the signals that organisations already encounter.
The second priority is to reinforce Local Runway Safety Teams. The initiative describes these teams as the main forum for airlines, airports, air navigation service providers and other stakeholders to assess local risks and agree coordinated action. That places the emphasis on the operating environment at each airport: the people who understand its layout, procedures and traffic patterns are expected to work through risks together, rather than relying on a single organisation to solve them in isolation.
The third is to share progress and lessons learned so effective practices can be adopted more widely by airports and organisations with similar operating environments. The combination of local teams and cross-site learning is important to the announcement’s logic: local risk assessments remain local, while useful mitigations can travel.
What it builds on
This is not presented as a standalone replacement for existing runway-safety work. IATA says the initiative builds on the Global Action Plan for the Prevention of Runway Incursions (GAPPRI), developed through a collaboration involving ICAO, EUROCONTROL and the Flight Safety Foundation and endorsed by IATA, ACI and CANSO. It also points to the ICAO Global Runway Safety Action Plan.
The organisations also list the tools they intend to put to work: ACI’s Runway Safety Team Implementation Package under its APEX in Safety programme; a Runway Safety Checklist co-developed by ACI and CANSO; IATA’s Runway Incursion Safety Risk Assessment; the GAPPRI gap-analysis tool for airlines; and assessments of airline risk assessments and mitigations through the IOSA programme. The announcement gives a useful map of the practical material behind the initiative, but it does not provide a rollout calendar or claim a measured reduction in incursions.
Why this matters to passengers
For travellers, the immediate significance is institutional rather than a new booking rule. The announcement does not change boarding procedures, airline schedules or airport access. Instead, it sets out how the three bodies want safety information and operational experience to move between the organisations that share the runway environment.
Runway incursions are a system issue: an aircraft, vehicle or person can be involved, and prevention depends on coordination among airlines, airports, air navigation services, regulators and frontline personnel. That is why the initiative’s scope reaches beyond cockpit or tower procedures. For a passenger reading the announcement, the relevant claim is not that a new safeguard has already produced a result, but that the industry groups have agreed to organise work around earlier reporting, local risk review and repeatable lessons.
That distinction is important. IATA, CANSO and ACI are announcing a framework for cooperation, not publishing an outcome study. The source names no deadline for implementation and gives no performance figure for the initiative itself. Flight & Rail therefore treats this as verified reporting on a safety-policy development, not as evidence that the risk has already fallen.
What to watch next
The next meaningful evidence will be operational: whether Local Runway Safety Teams use the listed tools, whether near-miss and precursor reporting becomes more consistent, and whether the partners share documented lessons from airports working in comparable conditions. Those are the points at which a joint announcement can be tested against practice.
For now, the 28 July announcement establishes three clear commitments: improve the information entering runway-safety processes, strengthen the local groups that interpret it, and circulate what works. It is a focused aviation-safety initiative, and its value will depend on how visibly those commitments become routine in airport operations.
Official sources
Primary source: Official source: iata.org