Aviation Safety/News

Line Up and Wait 
October 2010

The new "Line up and Wait"
(LUAW) phraseology became effective replacing "taxi into position and hold" (TIPH) September 30, and was a long time coming.  The NTSB made recommendations 10 years ago based on runway incursion studies. The first week into it, all of the controllers were practicing any chance they could by issuing everyone "Line up and Wait" instructions, rather than just "cleared for takeoff". 

As we all know, the English Language can be rather ambiguous, to say the least.  As an instructor working with students who's first language is not English, as well as US born students using English as their native language, there is often much confusion between the use of "position and hold", "hold your position", and "hold short", sometimes leading to dangerous runway incursions.

When I was flying down in the Caribbean Islands, "Line up and Wait" was common phraseology as all the different countries operated on Int'l rules, (ICAO). This phraseology has been used successfully internationally for years and will hopefully sound as normal in the future as "position and hold" has in the past. 

Sue Ballew
www.skytrekker.net