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Growing US airport problem: runways
Forty nine people were killed in August when a Comair regional jet took off on the wrong runway at Lexington Blue Grass Airport in Kentucky. A few months later, a 6-year-old boy in a car was killed when a Southwest Airlines 737 overran a runway at Chicago’s Midway Airport and plowed into the street.
That brings up a growing problem, according to federal regulators.
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More than half of U.S. commercial airports don’t have a 1,000-foot margin at the end of a runway, an overrun area the federal government says is needed as a safety zone, according to a new report.
Some of the busiest airports in the country have more than one runway that doesn’t meet safety standards, according to statistics supplied by the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Our runways are out of shape, and the Bush administration has failed to move to correct the problem,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, quoted in an Associated Press report. “If we don’t get serious about runway problems, the result could be disastrous.”
The FAA says it is upgrading the runways. The agency expects that all of them will meet the standard by 2015, when they are legally required to do so, according to FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.
At 325 airports — more than half of the 573 commercial airports in the United States — at least one runway lacks the 1,000-foot s figures. Almost half of all commercial runways — 507 of 1,017 — don’t meet the safety standard.
Deadly airplane crashes can happen on runways because they’re too short, improperly lit, poorly designed or lack safety equipment, said the AP. A minor procedural error by a pilot or an air traffic controller can turn tragic if a vehicle or another airplane happens to be in the way.
Federal safety investigators are looking into three other runway mishaps this week alone.
Part of the problem is that airports were built in congested urban areas and have no room to lengthen their runways.
Report by David Wilkening
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