Updates Regarding Taxi Into Position and Hold
Following a thorough safety risk management study, Taxi Into Position and Hold procedures changed on Feb. 5, 2007, to increase safety in the National Airspace System. These procedures are now being implemented into ZJX.
The new guidelines are designed to increase peer oversight and situational awareness for pilots and controllers using an operation that had been linked to an increased number of runway incursions last winter. The changes modify the use of “Taxi Into Position and Hold”, TIPH, a procedure that benefits efficiency. TIPH allows controllers to move departing aircraft onto a runway before the runway is open for the flight to take off. Once the runway is clear — taxiing aircraft have moved across the runway or a plane that just landed has turned onto a taxiway — a controller can give departure clearance to a plane that is already set to go.
Without TIPH, a plane must hold short on an adjacent taxiway until the runway is clear, then receive departure clearance, move into takeoff position, and only then begin the takeoff roll. With TIPH, runway exit and entrance operations can take place simultaneously and save precious time.
Under the new rules, a local controller must exclusively be doing the work of the local control position to be able to issue TIPH instructions. If the local control position is combined with ground control or another non-local control position, TIPH be conducted.
In another change, when issuing TIPH instructions, controllers now must wait until the departing flight is airborne to give landing clearance to flights arriving on the same runway. If an arriving aircraft contacts the local controller before the landing runway is available due to a pending departure, the proper phraseology is “Delta 1590, Orlando Tower, continue for runway 18R, traffic is a Southwest 737 holding in position.” Or alternatively, “Delta 1590, Orlando Tower, continue for runway 18R, traffic is a departing Southwest 737/Southwest 737 departing prior to your arrival.”
Should an arriving aircraft contact the Local Controller, and the Local Controller issues a landing clearance, then a departing aircraft on the same runway contacts Local Control ready to depart, and sufficient separation is present and the Local Controller wishes to allow the departure, the arriving aircraft’s landing clearance MUST be cancelled. “Delta 1590, landing clearance cancelled, continue for runway 18R. Traffic will be departing prior to your arrival.”
Additionally, when a controller tells a pilot to taxi into position and hold, he must now tell that pilot about flights operating on intersecting and parallel runways as well as the runway in use. The controllers also have to inform the pilots operating the flights on the crossing and parallel runways about the flight waiting to depart. This has long been a technique used by tower controllers to ensure safe operations, but the new rules make it a requirement.
The final changes to TIPH procedures involve full-length and partial-length departures. If a departing aircraft enters a runway from a taxiway that does not feed the end of a runway, the ground controller now needs to communicate the entrance point, either on the flight progress strip or verbally, to the local controller. And using TIPH simultaneously on the same runway, which is possible if the planes use different runway entrances, is limited to daylight hours and staffing levels that allow for a local assist or local monitor position.
