AATMP-12 helipad and heliport marking and lighting

What it is

AATMP-12, an Allied Air Traffic Management Publication, sets out how a helipad or heliport is marked and lit so a helicopter pilot can identify it, see its edges, and land safely under Visual Meteorological Conditions. It works through every visual aid a facility can carry, an identification "H", a border edge marking, perimeter and approach lights, wind indicators, glide slope indicators, and it is explicit, requirement by requirement, about which of them are mandatory and which are left for a service provider to add.

The document treats two facilities separately, because they are not the same thing. A helipad is "a prepared area, including landing and hover points, designated and used for take-off and landing of helicopters". A heliport is "a facility designated for operating, basing, servicing, and maintaining helicopters", and it adds runways, taxiways and holding positions a bare helipad never has. AATMP-12 does not bind by existing: nations record their agreement to use it through STANAG 3619, and it reaches a company only once a contract, or its role as the national service provider for a facility, puts the obligation there. Edition A, Version 2 (August 2026) is effective on receipt and supersedes Version 1, which nations are told to destroy under their own document-destruction procedure.

Marking and lighting a helipad

A helipad's identification marking, a white letter "H" at the geometric centre, aligned with the approach direction, is mandatory, as is the border edge marking around the safe touchdown area. A hospital helipad may add a red "H" inside a white square pattern, and obstruction and taxiway markings hand off to STANAG 3346 and STANAG 3158 rather than repeating their criteria. Marking materials have to hold up: they must be durable pavement marking media that will not demand excessive maintenance or create a hazard for a helicopter or the people working the area.

Lighting follows the same mandatory-versus-permissive split. Perimeter lights, aviation yellow and frangible, are mandatory and specified down to their candela output at different elevation angles. Landing direction lights, approach direction lights, floodlighting and hospital wing lights are all permissive additions a service provider layers on where the operation calls for them, each with its own spacing, mounting height and luminous-intensity criteria. A mandatory wind direction indicator, sized and coloured for visibility from at least 200 metres and illuminated for night use, and an optional beacon or visual glide slope indicator (CHAPI, APAPI or HAPI) round out what a helipad can carry, the glide slope systems added where obstacle clearance, noise abatement or a particular helicopter's handling characteristics require a stabilised approach.

A heliport adds runways

Where a heliport has rotary-wing runways, AATMP-12 requires a mandatory white numeric runway designation with an "H" identifier, sized and positioned to match ICAO's civil aerodrome standard, mandatory holding positions set back from the runway, and mandatory taxiway markings, yellow rather than the white used for the runway itself. Where two runways intersect, marking precedence goes to whichever is more important operationally or equipped for the lowest visibility minima. Heliport lighting mirrors this: runway edge lights, bidirectional green and red threshold lights, taxiway signs and lights (with a full spacing table for curved taxiway sections), and apron floodlighting each carry their own configuration and intensity requirements, and obstruction lighting and light screening simply repeat the helipad rules.

Keeping a facility safe, not just built

AATMP-12 is not only a design reference. Its Annex A sets out a five-point check a NATO Led Service Provider is expected to run before relying on any of it: confirm the STANAG is suitable for the type of operation, confirm the edition and amendments are current, obtain the documents it cites, check ratification status, and, for an existing facility, work out for itself whether that facility is in compliance with the criteria. It then names specific hazards that keep recurring in service: perimeter lights knocked loose or misaligned by rotor downwash, CHAPI or APAPI units drifting out of alignment, markings and lights obscured by dust, snow or frost, more than two lights in a row burned out, and LED obstruction lights that are not visible to pilots using night-vision goggles, each paired with a stated mitigation. Full safety surveys are also required under STANAG 4720, NATO's Air Traffic Management Safety Management System standard, on top of these specific checks.

Genuinely unusual for a NATO technical publication: almost every requirement announces in its own heading whether it is "Mandatory" or "Permissive", so a reader is not left inferring which of the dozens of criteria across the document are compulsory and which are options a service provider chooses to add.

Where it gets its force, and what it leans on

AATMP-12 does not stand alone. It hands specific work to three companion STANAGs rather than repeating their criteria: STANAG 3158 for day marking of runways and taxiways, STANAG 3316 for airfield lighting, and STANAG 3346 for marking and lighting airfield obstructions. It borrows its colours and much of its runway and holding-position layout from ICAO Annex 14, the civil aerodrome and heliport standard, and its own safety surveys are carried out under STANAG 4720. The publication itself is carried by STANAG 3619, which is what a nation actually ratifies; AATMP-12 is the technical content underneath it. Outside our catalogue, it also references TMS-823-4, a US Army standard for marking and lighting Army airfield heliport facilities, and STANAG 7210 (AEP-68), which Annex A cites for judging whether a STANAG suits a deployed operation.

There is no certification against AATMP-12. NATO issues no accreditation and audits no facility against it; the closest it comes to an evaluation mechanism is Annex A's own instruction, which puts the compliance determination on the service provider operating the facility, not on an outside body.

Standards it references

• STANAG 3158Binds
• STANAG 3346Binds
• STANAG 3316Background
• STANAG 4720Background