This article describes a real-life safety concern which was discussed at a meeting of the EUROCONTROL Safety Improvement Sub-group (SISG). Details have been changed to preserve anonymity.

Sometown Airport has two towers, one for the Air Traffic Controllers controlling the taxiways and the runways and one for the Apron Controller handling the apron.

The airport has three runways, the two parallel runways 09R/27L and 09L/27R, plus the crossing runway 18/36, only used in extreme crosswind situations (Figure 1).

Figure 1

During recent years there have been a number of runway incursions on runway 18/36, including a few serious incidents.