NYC's JFK International Airport Installs More Plane-Stopping Arrestor Beds

On May 8, 1999, an American Eagle Saab 340, carrying 27 passengers and three crew members attempted a landing at a foggy, rainy John F. Kennedy International Airport. According to the Federal Aviation Administration Technical Center, it landed just 1,500 feet from the end of the runway, 500 feet beyond which is Thurston Bay. Stopping the aircraft was the Engineered Materials Arresting System, a 400-foot-long soft ground arrestor bed. The landing gear remained intact and damage to the aircraft was minimal. This incident is one of four incidents in which the technology successfully kept aircraft from overrunning a runway—three at JFK and one at Greenville Downtown Airport in South Carolina.

Now the Port Authority Board of Commissioners has authorized additional EMAS systems to be installed at the ends of Runway 22L at JFK, Runway 29 at Newark Liberty International Airport and Runway 19 at Teterboro Airport.

"The reason for installing them at these runways is the same. We are installing them to comply with the FAA mandates for a runway safety area," said Port Authority spokesman Marc Lavorgna.

FAA requires that commercial airports, regulated under Part 139 safety rules, have a standard runway safety area where possible. At most commercial airports, the RSA is 500 feet wide and 100 feet beyond the end of the runway. For those who do not have a lengthy RSA, this technology stops or greatly slows an aircraft that overruns the runway.

"If you stand on it or drive your car on it, you wouldn't be able to tell that it collapses," said Lavorgna. "The bottom is aerated and it crumbles under the weight of an aircraft. It starts to rise from zero to 30 inches, depending on the geometry of the location. As the plane hits it, it begins to collapse; it is like driving into snow that gets deeper and deeper."

According to a Federal Aviation Administration factsheet, EMAS is installed at 23 runway ends at 18 airports in the United States, with plans to install eight more systems at six more U.S. airports. Currently, JFK has one arrestor bed, LaGuardia has two and Teterboro has one. The system installed at Newark will be its first.

The estimated cost for installation of the new systems is $19 million at JFK, $14.9 million at Newark Liberty and $40.7 million at Teterboro. The higher cost at Teterboro is due to the need to relocate a local street in order to complete construction.

"We have to relocate an access road and its utility lines," according to Lavorgna.

Since the initial installation, JFK has experienced two incidents in which the technology helped keep the aircraft from overrunning the runway, including a May 2003 incident where a Gemini Cargo MD-11 was safely decelerated, and in January 2005 a Boeing 747 overran the runway.

Lavorgna doesn't believe, however, that this same technology could have prevented a 2005 accident in which a twin-engine Canadair Challenger 600 skidded off a Teterboro runway, through a fence and across a highway, striking several cars before crashing into a clothing warehouse.

"There's no conclusive evidence that it could have stopped it, but it might've slowed it down," he said. "It was going at a high rate of speed and wasn't really on the ground—it was up a little. Probably the only thing that would've stopped that plane was a wall and that would've killed people."

Each new bed will take at least two years to be installed and functioning, Lavorgna said.