Tarmac driving school

One of the most funny, but potentially stressful thing to do on an airport, as an insider, is to drive on the tarmac. There are a few additional rules compared to public roads driving, and it's not such an easy environment.

The first rule is easy. If you've got a plane vs. car incident, the car driver is guilty. Always. Even if the plane pilot is blind, drunk, and sleepy (be relaxed, they're not). The good part is that airliners are so HUGE that you can harldy not see them... except if you're blind, drunk and sleepy ;-)

But light jets, and more generally speaking light aircrafts are much smaller, and can taxi quite fast, so you have to be careful.

Something else that make this exercise not so easy is that there are no roads on airports, at least not on main tarmac. No roads borders, no streets, all what you get is a mixed set of lines on the ground. Even crossings, stops, give-way signs are painted instead of being on signs, to avoid them being obstacles to taxiing planes. Needless to say, only a few traffic lights, not applicable to planes.

Apart from the shame of hitting a plane with your car, the other big risk is jet-blast. To be safe, one must cross behind a plane at a distance equivalent to at least three times the plane length. Except on spots dedicated to engine tests, which can have terrible effects. To be convinced of that, here is a classical training video from United.



This is usually shown during theory training sessions. Yes, there are dedicated driving schools run by the airport authorities, and some require theoretical and practical testing.

These lessons also includes rules on where cars are allowed, where they can park, and special areas with restricted access. These areas, mainly runways and taxiways, can be accessed only with a clearance from the ground controller, according to ground traffic.

One final remark, about firemen flashlights. When looking at an airport, you can nearly always see firemen trucks arround one airplane or another. 95% of the time, they are doing on job training. The easy way to distinguish a true emergency from a routine exercise is to look at the flashlights. Orange means training, or normal movement, whereas blue flashlights are reserved for actual emergencies in progress.

So next time you see a firetruck beside your plane, with orange lights on it, stay cool, but if the blue lights are on......