A plane crash at Miami International Airport over the weekend has aviation safety experts revisiting a basic question: What happens when an aircraft reaches the end of a runway and cannot stop?
At Boston Logan International Airport, crews are already several days into the final phaseof a runway safety project designed for exactly that type of scenario.
The project creates an Engineered Materials Arresting System, or EMAS, which consists of crushable concrete blocks installed just beyond the end of a runway. The work underway on Logan’s Runway 9-27 will make this the airport’s third runway equipped with EMAS.
”It’s porous concrete. So you lay these blocks out, almost like a LEGO set. And the length and the width and the depth is sufficient to help stop the aircraft,“ said Dave Ishihara, the airport’s deputy executive director of aviation.
Ishihara said the material is collapsible so that an uncontrolled airplane would roll into the EMAS blocks ”almost like going from a paved road to a sand box.“
Why EMAS matters at Logan
At Logan, there is an additional reason airport officials say such protection is important: its runways are surrounded by water.
“Unlike other airports that are landlocked and have, sort of, extra terra firma, we don’t have that in every circumstance,” said Ishihara.
At Logan, the EMAS bed is being constructed from sections of engineered concrete material roughly measuring four feet by four feet. And although they look solid, the blocks are designed to crumble as they give way beneath the enormous weight of an aircraft.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, EMAS has safely stopped 26 overrunning aircraft since the late 1990s. A total of 497 crew and passengers were on those flights.
Logan’s closure of Runway 9-27 began Aug. 31. According to Massport, the work is expected to be complete before the Thanksgiving holiday.
