FAA Sets 10-Year Schedule to Improve Runway Ends at Airports

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is embarking on a 10-year plan to at least improve, if not fully bring up to standard, the runway ends at most of the nation's commercial airports.

FAA's plan will involve a total of 248 runway safety areas (RSAs) at the nation's commercial airports, and its involvement could cover a range of options. For example, the agency could simply assist an airport in acquiring some more land off the end of its runways, or just provide assistance in grading the extra land -- coaxing it into a fairly even, no-more-than 3 percent grade -- in order to safely handle an overrun. Then again, the agency's help could entail the installation of the still relatively new product for runway ends, known as "Emerging Material Arresting System" (EMAS).

EMAS, manufactured by Engineered Arresting Systems Corp. (ESCO) of Logan Township, N.J., is made of a cellular cement material typically cast into four- foot square blocks (Air Safety Week, Aug. 8., 2005, p. 1). Placed at a varying depth of several inches in the runway ends, the material crushes in a controlled manner under the weight of an aircraft and gradually stops its forward momentum. EMAS is currently deployed at 14 airports, and is deployed at a total of 18 runway ends.

EMAS still remains the only alternative for this type of use in RSAs. FAA is open to, but is apparently not actively encouraging, the development of similar products, as some observers believe it should.

Last fall, Congress passed a provision requiring FAA to systemically improve RSA conditions at the nation's airports by 2015. Thus, the agency, in concert with its various airport partners, has now set a 10-year schedule for gradually completing all the upgrades. Most of the work is scheduled to be done in the first five years. The sparser schedule leading up to 2015 will bring in most of the facilities where upgrades are a bit more challenging.

Many of Alaska's airports, for example, present such extra difficulties, and not just from surrounding mountains. Its the soil that presents a special problem. When newly upturned, it remains rather spongy or porous -- not really suitable for grading or laying down EMAS, said an FAA official who did not want his name on the record. This makes it necessary to apply the soil in layers, little by little each year, allowing gravity to slowly do its work in compressing it.

Congress's latest intervention aside, FAA was deep into RSA-improvement mode long before it became a legislative mandate, insists the same FAA official.

In the late 1980s, new federal regulations required airports to meet the RSA standards the next time they renovated or rebuilt their airfields. In some cases, that could have taken up to 20 years.

Then came the American Airlines Flight 1420 overrun in Little Rock, Ark., in 1999, when the MD-82 hit a steel light stanchion after roaring off the far end of the runway, killing the captain and 10 passengers, and injuring 86. That got the agency brass to thinking that they didn't want to wait up to 20 years in every case to make RSA improvements.

So, in 2000, the agency did its first nationwide inventory of RSAs, and found that more than 400 runway ends could use some improvement. To check on progress, the second nationwide RSA inventory was completed last summer.

For its part, manufacturer ESCO has learned to improve its EMAS installation methods to reduce the chances of the material absorbing extra moisture, which renders it less effective. For example, regular maintenance must take care of the caulk joints in the top of the EMAS blocks, says Kent Thompson, ESCO's vice president of airport engineering and sales. After repeated freezings and thawings, excess moisture can speed the material's degradation.

Moreover, the firm continues to work on improving the materials' coating so it better resists the effects of jet blasts, and has better overall durability, Thompson tells Air Safety Week. Meanwhile, four more airports are currently completing their contracts for EMAS installation, and another half- dozen are expected to sign on in the next few months, he adds.

>>Contact: FAA Airport Engineering Division, (202) 267-7669; Kent Thompson, ESCO, (856) 241-8620, ext. 450, [email protected]<<

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