Virginia Runway Overrun Saved by EMAS Bed After Heavy Rain
No injuries reported after United Express flight overruns a Roanoke runway; engineered materials arresting system stops the aircraft, officials say.
A passenger jet skidded off a runway at Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport during heavy rain Wednesday night but was stopped by an engineered materials arresting system bed at the end of the runway, officials said. CommuteAir Flight 4339, operating as United Express from Washington Dulles International Airport to Roanoke, carried 50 passengers and three crew members.
The Embraer 145 overran a secondary runway after overshooting the touchdown zone in wet conditions around 9 p.m., but the EMAS bed arrested the aircraft as designed, bringing it to a stop traveling at roughly 80 mph.
Airport spokesperson Alexa Briehl said the safety area upgrade completed last year performed as intended, and there were no injuries reported by the flight crew. Passengers were escorted to the terminal, and law enforcement released them a little before midnight, officials said. All runways at the airport were closed for a period of time; one runway reopened after midnight to arriving and departing traffic, while the overrun runway remained closed.
The incident will be investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration, which said it would review the sequence of events and communications with air traffic control.
Across the United States, EMAS technology is used at about 70 airports on at least 120 runways, the FAA says. Similar systems are deployed in China and Spain. EMAS was developed in the 1990s after FAA runway safety rules were updated and many airports could not build conventional runway runoff areas. The technology has stopped more than two dozen planes that overran runways, including at major hubs such as New York LaGuardia and JFK, Chicago O’Hare, and Boston Logan, according to FAA data.