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Safeguards for runaway planes lag at major airport runways

Dec 8, 2009 | Joan Lowy | World & Natiopn News

Joshua Woods, 6, was singing Christmas songs Dec. 8, 2005, when a runaway plane at Chicago's Midway Airport crashed through a fence and collided with his family's car, killing the boy. The tragedy underscores what the government says is an urgent safety problem.

Eleven major airports are struggling to meet federal requirements that runways be surrounded by safety areas that give runaway planes extra room to stop, according to a new report from the Transportation Department's inspector general. The airports account for nearly a quarter of the nation's air passenger travel.

All the airports have been working for years to come up with solutions, but often there's no place to send runaway planes because the airports are hemmed in by highways, water, buildings or other obstructions.

The airports are located in Baltimore; Boston; Charlotte, N. C.; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Los Angeles; New York; Philadelphia; Phoenix; San Francisco; and Washington. Midway made safety improvements two years after Woods' death.

Between 1997 and 2007, 75 aircraft overran or veered off runways, resulting in nearly 200 injuries and 12 deaths, the report said. In just three of the accidents cited in the report, 80 injuries and Woods' death could have been prevented if safety improvements to runways made after the accidents had been in place beforehand, it said.

Safety areas typically are 1,000 feet long and 500 feet wide at each end of a runway, plus 250 feet along both sides of the runway.

The Federal Aviation Administration has allowed some airports that don't have enough room for full-size safety areas to install crunchable concrete beds at the ends of runways. The beds are designed to stop or slow planes, not unlike the way gravel-covered ramps on highways stop runaway trucks.

The beds are typically about 600 feet long instead of 1,000 feet. Beds at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport have already halted three runaway planes. But even that requires more room than is feasible at some airports.

The report said some of the 11 airports may not be able to meet a congressional deadline of 2015 to put runway safety areas in place. Installing safety areas can require filling in wetlands, requiring environmental reviews that can take as long as 12 years to complete. Community opposition to airport expansion because of noise concerns has also been a factor.

The FAA has already spent $2 billion helping hundreds of airports put runway safety areas in place, said Laura Brown, an agency spokeswoman. In addition to the roughly $300 million budgeted annually for the program, the economic-stimulus plan signed by President Obama contains millions of extra dollars, she said.

"We're working with all these airports to see if we can do all these things as quickly as possible," Brown said.