Narrative:

Aircraft X exited the runway at november 2 and reported a flat right main. The aircraft was still in the safety area; but clear of the runway edge. This situation has happened in the past and our normal procedure would be to close the taxiway; give cautions to arriving and departing aircraft; per 7110.65 3-1-5 and 3-1-6. So I did what we normally do. Operations asked if it was our policy to close the runway; I responded that I was not aware of ATC policy to close a runway because of a closed taxiway. We often have vehicles; such as mowers; operations or tech ops near the runway edge; even closing taxiways for short periods and we just give traffic and continue with business as usual. I did not consider this situation to be fundamentally different. A controller came up the stairs and advised that they were sure that it was illegal for us to use the runway in this situation. There was some debate among the controllers during which time we canceled practice approaches and eventually stopped all arrivals and departures. Fortunately aircraft X was pushed out of the safety area just a few minutes later. I called the roc to see if they knew what the correct answer was since none of us could find a reference. The roc put me on the phone with a nice lady from qcg (unfortunately I did not write down her name) who advised me that a disabled aircraft in the safety area causes the runway to become 'unavailable' and gave me 7110.65 chapter 3 as a reference. She said that we call it unavailable and do not allow any aircraft to use it; but only airport operations can actually close the runway. I looked for an applicable reference in the 7110 and could not find it. In fact 3-1-5; 3-1-6 and 3-3-1 seem to suggest the opposite. During the time we were using the runway with the disabled aircraft X north of it; I do not believe any unsafe operations took place. My question is what is the reference for 'unavailable runways.' why am I not familiar with this reference after working here for 8 years? Can we have this rule changed? What is the difference between closing a taxiway (for example) for a survey crew for 30 minutes vs a disabled aircraft? In effect; we are saying that because of a closed taxiway; we have to discontinue all operations at our airport. We need to take several aircraft in the pattern and send them away or juggle them in our airspace. We also have to make approach reroute all of their IFR arrivals and delay all of our departures for what is essentially an unexpected taxiway closure. In my opinion when one takes into account fuel considerations for these VFR aircraft and the extra workload for local control and approach control; it would be safer to continue operations to the runway.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: CRQ Controllers report of an aircraft that gets a flat tire while exiting the runway but stops within the safety area of the runway. Operations continue even though the aircraft is in the safety area.

Narrative: Aircraft X exited the runway at November 2 and reported a flat right main. The aircraft was still in the safety area; but clear of the runway edge. This situation has happened in the past and our normal procedure would be to close the taxiway; give cautions to arriving and departing aircraft; per 7110.65 3-1-5 and 3-1-6. So I did what we normally do. Operations asked if it was our policy to close the runway; I responded that I was not aware of ATC policy to close a runway because of a closed taxiway. We often have vehicles; such as mowers; operations or tech ops near the runway edge; even closing taxiways for short periods and we just give traffic and continue with business as usual. I did not consider this situation to be fundamentally different. A controller came up the stairs and advised that they were sure that it was illegal for us to use the runway in this situation. There was some debate among the controllers during which time we canceled practice approaches and eventually stopped all arrivals and departures. Fortunately Aircraft X was pushed out of the safety area just a few minutes later. I called the ROC to see if they knew what the correct answer was since none of us could find a reference. The ROC put me on the phone with a nice lady from QCG (unfortunately I did not write down her name) who advised me that a disabled aircraft in the safety area causes the runway to become 'unavailable' and gave me 7110.65 chapter 3 as a reference. She said that we call it unavailable and do not allow any aircraft to use it; but only airport operations can actually close the runway. I looked for an applicable reference in the 7110 and could not find it. In fact 3-1-5; 3-1-6 and 3-3-1 seem to suggest the opposite. During the time we were using the runway with the disabled Aircraft X north of it; I do not believe any unsafe operations took place. My question is what is the reference for 'Unavailable runways.' Why am I not familiar with this reference after working here for 8 years? Can we have this rule changed? What is the difference between closing a taxiway (for example) for a survey crew for 30 minutes vs a disabled aircraft? In effect; we are saying that because of a closed taxiway; we have to discontinue all operations at our airport. We need to take several aircraft in the pattern and send them away or juggle them in our airspace. We also have to make approach reroute all of their IFR arrivals and delay all of our departures for what is essentially an unexpected taxiway closure. In my opinion when one takes into account fuel considerations for these VFR aircraft and the extra workload for Local Control and Approach Control; it would be safer to continue operations to the runway.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.