By Lonna Whiting For airports large and small, leaders spend a lot of time prioritizing capital work, advancing strategic initiatives, and maintaining regulatory requirements. It’s a constant challenge, and anytime you bring a runway construction project into the mix, it doesn’t take long for overwhelm, deadline stress, and budget anxiety to follow. Like many airport… Read more »
By Samuel Allen, C.M., ACE Airport Operations Manager and AOA Safety Consultant In any safety-oriented company culture, frontline employees play a pivotal role and are often underappreciated. While leadership may define policies and procedures, it is the daily actions, decisions, and observations of these employees that ultimately determine whether a workplace remains safe or becomes… Read more »
By Samuel Allen, C.M., ACE Airport Operations Manager and AOA Safety Consultant In the highly regulated and safety-critical environment of aviation, human factors remain a persistent and leading contributor to incidents. Among these, attitudes of resignation pose another subtle yet serious threat to safe and efficient airport operations. FAA’s definition of resignation The FAA describes… Read more »
By Lonna Whiting, writer, Alder Airfield Services A pilot flying one of her regular routes prepares her descent onto a runway she’s navigated hundreds, maybe thousands of times before. She expects all to be clear. After all, she’s landed in that very spot time and again without incident. Then one day, the runway appears normal… Read more »
Editor’s note: At La Guardia Airport on March 22, 2026, two pilots were killed, and 43 passengers and crew were injured when the Air Canada plane operated by Jazz Aviation collided with a fire truck upon landing. Since then, safety experts have cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the causes of the incident until investigators… Read more »
Written for Alder by Airport Operations Consultant Samuel Allen, C.M., ACE, this special blog series focuses on hazardous behavioral attitudes that deter safety on the AOA. From overly confident macho men and women to the flaggers who seem to have no fear, Sam defines the most common characteristics of hazardous attitudes in aviation construction work.… Read more »
By Samuel Allen, C.M., ACE Airport Operations Manager Macho attitudes are prevalent in the modern world. An extension of the “Look mom, no hands!” philosophy has ebbed and flowed throughout pop culture to the beat of many different generational drums. Macho attitudes are also rampant in the aviation and construction industries— and both career fields… Read more »
By Samuel Allen, C.M., ACE Airport Operations Manager Despite the airport environment being unlike any other work environment, common problems and challenges persist. In a “normal” setting, multiple chances to get things right are commonplace, often resulting in perseverance being at the forefront of workplace mentalities. Oftentimes though, the airport can be a high-consequence locale,… Read more »
By Ilona A. Munzer, CEO, Alder Airfield Services Each day we have the opportunity to learn something new. I dig that. In airfield construction, learning isn’t optional. It’s survival. Every project teaches us something about sequencing, coordination, communication, about what works beautifully on paper and what needs adjustment in the field. One lesson continues to… Read more »
By Samuel Allen, C.M., ACE Airport Operations Manager Airport construction takes place in one of the most unforgiving and fluid work environments imaginable. Crews operate heavy equipment near active taxiways and runways, often at night, under tight airfield closure windows, and within carefully sequenced construction phasing plans. In this setting, impulsivity becomes a hazardous attitude… Read more »