Fairbanks International Airport
Aircraft Accident/Incident Report

Fairbanks, Alaska 99701
Wednesday, May 1, 1996 17:57 AKD

The pilot of the Zenith, N200BV, had been cleared to conduct touch-and-go landings to hard surface runway 19L. Two minutes later, the pilot of a Cessna 185, N1074F, was cleared to land on gravel runway 19 that is oriented on the same magnetic heading as the hard surface runway but is displaced about 650 feet south of the end of the hard surface runway. There is no lateral displacement between the two runways. One minute later, the controller cleared the pilot of the Zenith to land, and advised '...I'll call the departure.' The controller did not receive a verbal response, only a garbled radio transmission. The pilot of the Zenith performed a touch-and-go and emerged under the second airplane that was in the landing approach to the gravel runway. The FAA's handbook for air traffic conrollers does not contain procedures for simultaneous operations on runways that are oriented on the same heading and not laterally parallel to each other.

the pilot's improper understanding of his amended clearance, and the local controller's failure to assure that the pilot understood that he was cleared only to land. Factors in the incident were: the airport design that places two airplanes in close proximity to each other, and the FAA's insufficient standards for simultaneous operations to runways not laterally displaced from one another.