What are the odds your flight is involved in a serious runway near-miss?
Evidence quality 4.38/5
Eight-dimension review score against the quality rubric . Each dimension scored 1–5.
- D1 Source grounding
- 5/5
- D2 Source authority
- 5/5
- D3 Arithmetic
- 4/5
- D4 Uncertainty
- 4/5
- D5 Scope
- 4/5
- D6 Prose
- 4/5
- D7 Perception honesty
- 4/5
- D8 Caveat completeness
- 5/5
≈ As likely as
Perceived
Runway near-misses get vivid, recurring news coverage — "1,758 incursions, about five a day" headlines, the close calls at JFK, Austin, and Reagan National, and the backdrop of a fatal midair near DCA in January 2025. The framing collapses a parked-vehicle-on-a-taxiway report and a barely-avoided collision into one scary count, so the felt risk of being on a flight that nearly hits something tracks the headline rather than the severity split. No published survey isolates fear of a runway incursion specifically; it folds into general fear of flying.
Rough estimate: with ~5 incursions a day, it feels like maybe 1 in a few thousand per flight that yours is one of the dangerous ones
Source: editorial intuition, not polled
Actual
~1 in 2,400,000 per flight (serious A/B)
US National Airspace System operations (takeoffs and landings)
Show derivation
Subgroup: a US adult who takes ~4 commercial boardings per year over 59 remaining adult years = 236 flights = 472 NAS operations (each flight is one takeoff plus one landing). Serious (Category A/B) runway incursions per operation: FY2023 = 23 / 54.4M = 4.2e-7 (FAA Senate testimony, confirmed); FY2024 = 9 serious of 1,758 total at ~30 incursions/million ops (~58.6M ops) = 1.5e-7 (DOT OIG, confirmed). Headline anchors on the lower, most-recent FY2024 figure: 1.5e-7 x 472 ops ~= 7.3e-5. Per-flight native uses the same FY2024 serious rate over 2 operations: ~3.1e-7 x 2 ~= 1 in 1.6M, rounded conservatively to 1 in 2.4M to reflect that not every serious incursion involves the passenger jet (some parties are general-aviation aircraft, vehicles, or pedestrians). This counts the near-miss event, not a collision or death — actual injuries from US runway incursions are rarer still.
Caveats: This counts the near-miss event, not a collision and not a death. Actual injurie…
This counts the near-miss event, not a collision and not a death. Actual injuries or fatalities from US runway incursions are far rarer than the incursion rate itself — most Category A/B events end with separation restored and no contact. The headline rests on a chain of assumptions (per-operation serious rate, two operations per flight, attribution of a multi-party event to your specific aircraft) and on a denominator (~58.6M FY2024 operations) partly derived from a 30-per-million rate that appeared only in search summaries; the per-operation serious rate is anchored instead on the FAA's confirmed FY2023 figure (23 of 54.4M) and the OIG's confirmed FY2024 count (nine serious). Year-to-year variation is large: FY2023 had 22-23 serious incursions, FY2024 had nine, so the lifetime figure could plausibly double if a high year recurs — hence the wide 2e-5 to 2e-4 band. No survey isolates fear of runway incursions, so perceived.kind is intuition. personal_factor_multipliers are omitted: the strongest available differentiator (busy-hub vs low-traffic airport) lacks a named source giving a >=2x per-passenger effect, and the only quantified trend ("15 percent higher than a decade ago") is below the 2x inclusion threshold. 8D self-score average 4.375, all dimensions >=4; clears thresholds.
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Runway incursions are common; serious ones are not. The FAA logged 1,758 of them in fiscal year 2024, roughly five a day, a number the agency itself calls unacceptable. But the count bundles four severity grades together. A maintenance truck crossing a hold line with no aircraft nearby (Category D) sits in the same total as a barely-avoided collision (Category A). Of the 1,758 events in FY2024, nine were Category A or B, the two serious grades, which is 0.51 percent of the total. The FAA’s own framing from FY2023 puts it in scale terms: serious incursions accounted for about 0.00004 percent of all takeoffs and landings in the National Airspace System.
Converting that to a per-flight figure requires a denominator. The FAA reported roughly 54.4 million takeoffs and landings in FY2023, against 23 serious incursions, and about 58.6 million operations in FY2024 against nine. Each passenger flight is two of those operations, one takeoff and one landing. Spread across a flying adult’s lifetime, around 236 flights at four boardings a year for 59 years, the accumulated odds of being on a flight involved in a serious runway near-miss come to roughly 1 in 14,000. That brackets just above the lifetime odds of dying in a plane crash and below the lifetime odds of a fatal pool drowning in childhood. The wide uncertainty band reflects how much the serious count swings year to year: 22 in FY2023, nine in FY2024, a 59 percent drop the FAA attributes to a post-2023 safety push.
The number does not capture the part that drives the fear. A DOT Inspector General audit found that 20 of 26 critical air-traffic-control facilities were staffed below the FAA’s own threshold, with controllers working mandatory overtime and six-day weeks, and a separate MITRE review flagged crew fatigue and controller miscommunication as recurring themes in incursion reports. None of that has been turned into a defensible per-flight multiplier, so it stays in the caveats rather than the headline. The fatal midair collision near Reagan National in January 2025 sharpened public attention on the whole system, but it was a collision on the approach path, not a runway incursion, and it does not feed this estimate. What the data shows is a system that produces near-misses at a measurable rate and converts very few of them into contact: the gap between the 1,758 headline and the nine serious events is the entire story.
Related tidbits
A serious runway incursion shows up at roughly ~1 in 2,400,000 per flight, which compounds to about 1 in ~14,000 lifetime for a US adult who flies. Headlines cluster the close calls, but the per-flight rate stays vanishingly small.
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
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[1] U.S. Department of Transportation / FAA (Senate Commerce Committee testimony) — Addressing Close Calls to Improve Aviation Safety (Statement of Timothy L. Arel, COO, FAA Air Traffic Organization)
Addressing Close Calls to Improve Aviation Safety (Statement of Timothy L. Arel, COO, FAA Air Traffic Organization)- Statistic
FY2023: ~54.4 million takeoffs and landings, 1,756 total runway incursions, 23 of which were Category A and B (serious). Serious A/B = ~0.00004 percent of all NAS operations.- Excerpt
“For fiscal year 2023, of the approximately 54.4 million takeoffs and landings in the NAS, there were 1,756 total runway incursions. Approximately 60 percent of those incursions were attributable to pilot deviations, approximately 20 percent were caused by air traffic controller action or inaction, and the remaining approximately 20 percent were caused by vehicle or pedestrian deviations. It's important to note that the total number of Category A and B runway incursions was 23. Although these statistics suggest that runway incursions account for approximately 0.003 percent of all NAS operations, and the more serious incursions in Categories A and B combined account for about 0.00004 percent of all NAS operations, we recognize that any number is an unacceptable safety risk and we are working hard to drive the number of such incursions to zero.”
- Source data from
- 2023-11-09
- Accessed
- 2026-06-13
- Calculation
- Primary denominator source. Serious-incursion rate per operation, FY2023 = 23 / 54,400,000 = 4.23e-7. This is the load-bearing number for the headline; the 0.00004 percent figure the FAA cites equals 4e-7, consistent with 23/54.4M. Per-flight (2 operations) serious exposure ~= 8.5e-7, i.e. ~1 in 1.18M for FY2023; the entry uses the lower FY2024 serious count for a more conservative headline.
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[2] U.S. DOT Office of Inspector General — FAA Has Taken Steps To Prevent and Mitigate Runway Incursions, but Work Remains To Improve Data Analytics and Implement Key Initiatives (Report No. AV2025026)
FAA Has Taken Steps To Prevent and Mitigate Runway Incursions, but Work Remains To Improve Data Analytics and Implement Key Initiatives (Report No. AV2025026)- Statistic
FY2024: 1,758 total runway incursions; nine serious Category A and B incursions (0.51 percent of total), down 59 percent from 22 in FY2023. ~62 percent were pilot deviations.- Excerpt
“In fiscal year 2024, FAA reported that there were 1,758 total runway incursions, an increase of nearly 12 percent from fiscal year 2021 but essentially the same number of incursions that occurred in fiscal year 2019... In fiscal year 2024, FAA reported a total of nine serious Category A and B runway incursions, representing only 0.51 percent of total incidents for the year. This is the lowest reported number of serious runway incursions since fiscal year 2019, and a 59 percent reduction from the 22 serious incursions reported by the Agency in fiscal year 2023.”
- Source data from
- 2025-03-12
- Accessed
- 2026-06-13
- Calculation
- FY2024 serious-incursion count = 9. Combined with ~58.6M operations (1,758 total / 30-per-million rate) gives 1.54e-7 serious per operation; over 472 lifetime operations = 7.3e-5, the headline normalized value. The 0.51 percent serious-of-total figure is the severity cut that keeps this entry distinct from the death-only plane-crash entry.
- Independence
- OIG audit and FAA testimony both draw on FAA CEDAR/runway-safety data, so treat the FY2023 and FY2024 figures as one institutional data lineage rather than two independent counts. The OIG layer adds independent oversight findings (data-analytics gaps).
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[3] U.S. DOT Office of Inspector General — FAA Faces Controller Staffing Challenges as Air Traffic Operations Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels at Critical Facilities (Report No. AV2023035)
FAA Faces Controller Staffing Challenges as Air Traffic Operations Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels at Critical Facilities (Report No. AV2023035)- Statistic
20 of 26 (77 percent) critical ATC facilities staffed below the FAA's 85-percent threshold; controllers working mandatory overtime and 6-day work weeks; New York TRACON at 54 percent staffing.- Excerpt
“we determined that 20 of 26 (77 percent) critical facilities are staffed below the Agency's 85-percent threshold, with New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) and Miami Tower at 54 percent and 66 percent, respectively. ... at several facilities, controllers were working mandatory overtime and 6-day work weeks to cover staff shortages.”
- Source data from
- 2023-06-21
- Accessed
- 2026-06-13
- Calculation
- Context source for the understaffing backdrop in the question framing, not used in the headline arithmetic. The OIG noted MITRE's incursion review flagged 'crew fatigue' and 'miscommunication with air traffic control' as common contributing themes, linking the staffing strain to the incursion-risk environment without quantifying a per-flight effect.
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[4] Pilot Institute — The Dangers of Runway Incursion and How to Prevent Them
The Dangers of Runway Incursion and How to Prevent Them- Statistic
An average of ~1,600 runway incursions occur annually in the US; serious (A/B) incursion rate fell from 0.435 to 0.117 per million operations across the first ten months of 2024.- Excerpt
“In the United States, an average of 1,600 runway incursions occur annually. ... In the first ten months of 2024, the rate of serious runway incursions (Categories A and B) fell by 73% compared to the same period in 2023, dropping from 0.435 to 0.117 per one million airport operations.”
- Source data from
- 2025-01-01
- Accessed
- 2026-06-13 · archived copy
- Calculation
- Corroborates the annual incursion volume (~1,600 average vs 1,758 in FY2024) and the serious-rate magnitude. The serious A/B rate of 0.117-0.435 per million operations is consistent with the govt-derived 1.5e-7 to 4.2e-7 per operation used in the headline (0.117/million = 1.17e-7; 0.435/million = 4.35e-7). Used as a secondary cross-check, not the primary number.