Ground-handling staff, airline crews and fuel-truck operators at Northern Cyprus’ Ercan International Airport downed tools for two hours on 4 November to take part in a Foreign-Object-Debris (FOD) Awareness Walk along the main runway and taxiways.
Organised by concessionaire T&T Havalimanı İşletmeciliği with support from Turkish Airlines, Pegasus and the north’s civil-aviation authority, the initiative collected hundreds of potentially hazardous items – from loose rivets to plastic bottles – that can cause tyre bursts or jet-engine ingestion. Participants received on-site briefings on ICAO best practice and logged each find in a new mobile app that timestamps debris removal and feeds the data to the airport’s Safety Management System.
![Ercan Airport stages runway-safety ‘FOD Walk’ to curb debris-related incidents]()
While routine at many large hubs, the exercise is a first for Ercan and comes as the airport courts new charter traffic from the Gulf and Central Asia. Clean-runway certification is now a prerequisite for several carriers’ insurance underwriters, making sustained FOD-control programmes essential for route development.
Travel-risk consultancies say the campaign will reassure corporate-travel departments that rely on Ercan as an alternative entry point when political tension or capacity constraints hit Larnaca and Paphos. The airport authority plans quarterly repeats and is exploring a voluntary ‘airside safety pass’ that would give business-jet crews priority in customs and immigration queues if they participate in future walks.
Organised by concessionaire T&T Havalimanı İşletmeciliği with support from Turkish Airlines, Pegasus and the north’s civil-aviation authority, the initiative collected hundreds of potentially hazardous items – from loose rivets to plastic bottles – that can cause tyre bursts or jet-engine ingestion. Participants received on-site briefings on ICAO best practice and logged each find in a new mobile app that timestamps debris removal and feeds the data to the airport’s Safety Management System.
While routine at many large hubs, the exercise is a first for Ercan and comes as the airport courts new charter traffic from the Gulf and Central Asia. Clean-runway certification is now a prerequisite for several carriers’ insurance underwriters, making sustained FOD-control programmes essential for route development.
Travel-risk consultancies say the campaign will reassure corporate-travel departments that rely on Ercan as an alternative entry point when political tension or capacity constraints hit Larnaca and Paphos. The airport authority plans quarterly repeats and is exploring a voluntary ‘airside safety pass’ that would give business-jet crews priority in customs and immigration queues if they participate in future walks.
