FAA Runway Mitigation Program Shows Measurable Gains

Airports where the FAA has mitigated problematic taxiway geometry are showing 77% fewer runway incursions per year after mitigation, according to the agency’s fiscal year 2025 Runway Incursion Mitigation (RIM) Program Annual Summary, released last week.

U.S. runway incursions numbered close to 1,700 annually between 2019 and 2025, with a brief pandemic-era dip before reaching 1,758 in 2024. This is a persistent problem that regulators, manufacturers, and industry groups have been mobilizing to address.

The RIM program is the FAA’s physical infrastructure response to that problem. It traces to a 2012 FAA study that identified 140 specific airport locations with disproportionately high incursion rates linked to nonstandard taxiway geometry: configurations that research showed created pilot confusion and elevated collision risk.

RIM launched formally in fiscal year 2015 to systematically mitigate those locations and track new ones as they emerge. It targets sites meeting defined threshold criteria: three or more incursions at a single location in one calendar year, or an average of at least one per year over the most recent decade. The FAA maintains a geographic information system database of approximately 520 towered airports, mapping every incursion to its specific location.

Mitigations are not merely procedural. They include physical reconstruction of taxiway geometry—reconfiguring intersections to meet 90-degree angles, narrowing taxiway pavement entrances, or closing direct ramp access to runways—along with lighting upgrades, signage relocation, and enhanced runway markings. In some cases, operational procedure changes supplement or replace physical work.

The 77% reduction figure is based on 98 locations that have contributed to reductions in the program’s active inventory through completed safety enhancements or full mitigation. Mitigated locations logged 1,471 incursions before treatment and 146 after. The report describes the RIM program as “one of the most successful safety programs in the FAA,” noting, “there has been a 45% reduction in the RIM Inventory since program inception, due to mitigation activity.” Of the 248 locations prioritized for mitigation since the program’s launch, the report indicates that 112 have been mitigated.

A defined two-stage standard is applied by the program for determining whether a location has been successfully “mitigated.” After safety enhancement work is completed, a location enters a “Safety Enhancement” stage, considered a short-term success, and remains under monitoring for up to three years. If incursions recur at threshold levels during that window, the location returns to the active RIM inventory for additional work. If not, it advances to what the report calls “Mitigation Complete,” at which point it is considered a long-term success. Locations where physical reconfiguration eliminates a runway/taxiway intersection bypass the monitoring window entirely and advance directly to Mitigation Complete. Critically, even fully mitigated locations “are still monitored to ensure long-term success.” That standard gives the 77% reduction figure additional weight.

The program has also refined how it measures success. Previously, the primary metric tracked changes in average incursion rates at mitigated locations, a measure the FAA determined did not accurately reflect program-wide risk reduction. The agency now tracks “Percent Change in RIM Inventory,” based on the principle that “a reduction in risk is a key aspect of program success, and that reduction in risk is achieved through a decrease in RIM Inventory locations.” 

A related methodology update introduced in fiscal year 2024, called Hot Spot Reassignment (HSR), moved incursion analysis away from broad hot spot zones toward individual runway/taxiway hold lines. Previously, a single hot spot point represented an entire polygon area regardless of how many intersections it covered; under HSR, each runway/taxiway intersection is assessed individually. The result is more precise targeting of the highest-risk, specific intersections, rather than general airport areas. Eight locations were removed from the inventory as a result of HSR, and five were newly identified.

In fiscal year 2025, the program georeferenced 1,268 runway incursions from calendar year 2024 data, bringing the cumulative total to 19,207 runway incursions recorded since tracking began in fiscal year 2008. The update added 100 new problematic taxiway geometry locations, prioritized 11 for mitigation, and identified 10 as “mitigated.”

At the end of fiscal year 2025, 136 active RIM locations remained at 79 airports across all regions, with the majority in planning, design, or construction phases. Among airports on the FAA’s Core 30 list (those handling at least 1% of passenger enplanements or 0.75% of total nonmilitary itinerant operations), the highest active location counts belong to Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (KHNL), five; Boston Logan (KBOS), four; and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (KATL), three. Los Angeles International Airport (KLAX) and Chicago O’Hare International Airport (KORD), among others, each carry two. Outside the Core 30, general aviation airports figure prominently in the active inventory: Chino Airport (KCNO) in California leads all airports with six active RIM locations, and Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (KMYF) in San Diego has five.

The report arrived on the heels of IATA, CANSO, and Airports Council International launching a joint runway safety initiative focused on data sharing, local runway safety teams, and shared mitigation practices across airports with similar operating environments. The RIM program’s decade of georeferenced incursion data and documented post-mitigation outcomes represent the kind of location-specific evidence the joint initiative has identified as central to spreading effective safety measures across the global airport network.