Aircraft overruns a long-standing concern

While runway hazards usually are considered in terms of takeoff or approach obstacles, potential troubles lie at the other end of the tarmac.

Railroad tracks sit about 500 feet past the end of runway 36R in Charlotte, N.C. In 1986, a Piedmont Airlines 737 was scrapped after overrunning that runway coming to rest on the railroad embankment.

The north end of both runways at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport features a large drop-off and a highway at the bottom, located close enough that runway approach lights were built on trestles over the roadway.

Runways at Boston's Logan airport and New York's LaGuardia run to the very edge of the water.

"There's a lot of airports that have very interesting things just off the end of the runway," said Bill Waldrock, also an air safety investigator and professor of safety science at Embry-Riddle.

FAA regulations require large airports to provide obstacle-free runway safety areas of 1,000 feet. But those regulations generally apply only to new runways; many older commercial airports with smaller safety areas have not been required to comply. Roads lie just 200 feet from either end of Midway's 33C.

Smaller airports
The problem is most acute at smaller airports, such as Burbank or Midway, that have been pressed into wider commercial service as U.S. air-travel capacity has surged.

Though newly built major airports like Denver International have plenty of room to expand, they only serve a handful of markets. Instead, carriers increasingly are relying on secondary airports, often holdovers from the prop era, with older infrastructure and a smaller footprint.

Until recently, such airports were mostly reserved for private planes and commuter turboprops, but they now service full-size jets. Many are in densely populated neighborhoods that make expansion costs prohibitive.

If these facilities can't expand, what to do? One popular solution endorsed by the FAA is the Engineered Material Arresting System — a mix of foam and cement that can be installed at either end of a runway. Just 600 feet of EMAS is considered equivalent to 1,000 feet of regular runway, and can successfully stop many commercial jets going 85 mph. A longer stretch of the soft material helps reduce the possibility of harm to passengers as the aircraft decelerates.

At large airports like New York's John F. Kennedy International, EMAS helped halt a 1999 overrun of an American Eagle Saab 340, and last January halted a 747 cargo jet in heavy snow.  After February's crash, Teterboro airport officials similarly opted to install the system at the end of their runways.

But for smaller airports such as Midway, which is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, such systems can be difficult to install. Chicago airport officials did not respond to an inquiry Friday as to whether EMAS had been considered at Midway.

Midway's proximity to neighbors has previously had disastrous consequences: Thirty-three years ago — to the day — a United 737 crashed at Midway while executing a missed approach procedure, ultimately plowing into a nearby home and killing 43 passengers and two women in the house.

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