"Teterboro Airport now has safer runway"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Friday, October 20, 2006

Teterboro Airport now has safer runway      
By DAVID A. MICHAELS
The Bergen (NJ) Record


Teterboro Airport is now relying on lightweight concrete cubes to stop jets
from careening off one of its busy runways.

Dozens of concrete blocks installed over the past week on Teterboro's Runway
6 are designed to collapse under the weight of planes, slowing them down.
Side by side, the blocks form a 265-foot-long cushion at the end of the
runway near Route 46.
  
"Runway overruns are an issue," said Anthony R. Coscia, chairman of the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport. "Teterboro
is a location where we have an extraordinary level of sensitivity to making
changes that we think will enhance its safety."

Nearly two years ago, a jet ran off a runway at Teterboro Airport, resulting
in disastrous collisions with cars on Route 46 and a factory.

If there is another overrun at Teterboro, the result should be more like
what happened last week in Burbank, Calif. An arrestor bed at Bob Hope
Airport stopped an out-of-control jet carrying Alex Rodriguez, the New York
Yankees player.

A change in federal law passed last year requires all commercial airports
without a 1,000-foot buffer at the end of their runways to install arrestor
beds. Airports have until 2015 to comply with the law.

The Port Authority installed the world's first arrestor bed at John F.
Kennedy International Airport in 1996. It has stopped runaway jets on three
occasions, most recently in 2005, officials said.

The agency also is installing two arrestor beds at La Guardia Airport. One
may be installed next year at a Newark Liberty International Airport runway
that borders the New Jersey Turnpike and Routes 1&9.

Teterboro's first arrestor bed cost $8.5 million. The Federal Aviation
Administration covered $7.5 million of the cost, but Coscia said it was
discretionary funding that the Port Authority chose to spend on Teterboro.

Although arrestor beds have been installed around the country, Port
Authority officials said the technology had only recently been adapted for
use at general-aviation airports such as Teterboro, where only jets weighing
less than 100,000 pounds can take off and land. The bed is designed to stop
planes traveling between 50 knots and 70 knots, or between 57 mph and 80
mph.

"As the comfort level [with the technology] rose, we felt an urgency to
install it as quickly as possible," Coscia said.

The Port Authority still must install a second arrestor bed at the end of a
runway that faces Moonachie Road and Redneck Avenue on the airport's south
side. It will likely cost about $11 million.

That installation is more complex, because it requires relocating a portion
of Redneck Avenue, which is too close to the end of the runway to
accommodate the bed, said William DeCota, the Port Authority's director of
aviation. Utilities and a berm that reduces jet noise also must to be moved.

"It is the top of the priority list," DeCota said.

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