Picture an airport at sunset. Engines rolling. Lights glowing. Vehicles weaving across the pavement. From far away it feels controlled. But on the ground, the smallest mistake can turn into a crisis in seconds.

A runway incursion happens when something enters an active runway when it shouldn’t. A plane crosses where another is landing. A service truck moves too far. A miscommunication slips through. These incidents are rising, and they are one of the clearest warning signs in aviation today.

The Hidden Rise in Near-Collisions

Flying is incredibly safe. Nearly five billion passengers traveled by air in 2024. But when you look specifically at runway activity, the trend is hard to ignore.

In 2023, the United States recorded 1,756 runway incursions, which is about four every single day¹.

Of those, 23 were serious incidents where a collision was narrowly avoided, up from 16 the year before¹.

These numbers show the system is feeling pressure. As passenger traffic continues to climb, older processes and tools are struggling to keep pace.

 

Why Runway Problems Keep Happening

Runway near-collisions usually do not come from one person making a mistake. They point to deeper issues in how airports operate.

Outdated technology

Many airports still use older radar, limited surface surveillance, and voice-based communication that becomes unreliable in fog or darkness². When the picture is incomplete, safety weakens.

Airports designed for another era

Some major airports were built decades ago and expanded piece by piece. Today they support far more traffic than they were ever designed for, with complex taxi paths and overlapping runways³.

New risks from GNSS interference

GPS jamming and spoofing have increased around the world. These attacks block or distort navigation signals, making it harder for pilots and systems to know their exact position⁴.

But the biggest challenge is not only the airports or the technology. It is the explosion of new aircraft entering low-altitude airspace.

The Drone Era Has Arrived

A decade ago, drones were hobbies. Today they deliver medical supplies, inspect infrastructure, monitor agriculture, and support emergency response.
In the coming years, global drone operations are expected to reach millions of flights per day⁵.

Most drones fly at low altitude, outside traditional radar coverage. They move quickly, unpredictably, and often near cities. Traditional systems were not designed to track them.

This is no longer a future problem. It is already here.

And Air Taxis Are Close Behind

Electric air taxis and personal “flying cars” are now being tested in the United States, Europe, China, and the Middle East.

Companies like Joby, Archer, Volocopter, Lilium, and EHang are preparing for commercial operations as early as 2026⁶.

These aircraft will operate low, fast, and close to urban centers, sharing space with drones and helicopters. They will add thousands of moving objects into the same narrow band of air.

The sky will not just be busy. It will be crowded.

 

The Growing Need for Accurate, Real-Time Tracking

As the number of aircraft increases, aviation will need more than upgrades to old radars. It will need systems that can track everything in the sky, all the time, with accuracy and redundancy.

This is where next-generation solutions show promise. Instead of relying on large centralized systems that take years and huge investments to deploy, some companies are building decentralized sensor networks.

A good example is the network under development by 4DSky. It uses multilateration, a method where multiple sensors verify the exact position of a drone or aircraft by comparing the timing of signals⁷.

Because each sensor processes information locally, the network avoids single points of failure. It scales outward like a growing grid.
You do not need one giant investment from a government or 1 private investment. You can expand it antenna by antenna, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, until the picture becomes strong enough to track thousands of aircraft at once.

This approach fits the world we are entering.
A world of drones.
A world of air taxis.
A world where precise, resilient, real-time tracking will be mandatory.

What the Future Requires

The fatal collision at Haneda Airport in 2024 was tragic, but the 1,760 near-misses in the United States alone are the everyday reminders that the system is under strain¹.

We need airports that match today’s traffic.
We need stronger tools in the tower.
And we need tracking systems built for a sky that is changing faster than ever.

The future will be louder, faster, and more crowded above our cities. Keeping it safe requires preparing now, with technology that can scale with the world we are building.