Queenstown Airport is about to become a lot safer with a new major upgrade being installed for the first time in Australasia.
The $23m Engineered Materials Arrestor System (EMAS) is designed to help stop a plane in its tracks in emergency if it overshoots the runway.
On average, the South Island tourist town has up to 70 commercial plane movements a day.
But this week, contractors have installed thousands of crushable concrete blocks, in a range of sizes, all in the name of safety.
“if an aircraft was to overrun the runway, the landing gear would crush the blocks under the weight of the aircraft and bring it to a controlled stop by decelerating it using the engineered material,” airport project manager Lydia Hartshorne told 1News.
The crew worked when the airport was closed at night to complete the project.
“Any capital works at the airport is extremely challenging, because we are a 365-day operation, so that means that we have to close the runway overnight and do all of our works overnight,” Hartshorne said.
Queenstown is the first New Zealand airport to purchase the system from Swedish-owned company Runway Safe who specialise in EMAS. The product is commonly used in North America and Europe.
“Like an airbag in a car, you may never use it but when you need to use it, it’s there so a lot of airports get it for that reason,” Runway Safe inspector Daniel Evans said.
The 73-metre EMAS bed “is equivalent to 240 metres of land”, Hartshorne said.
“So, we are essentially increasing our runway and safety area.”
Queenstown Airport chief executive Glen Sowry told 1News EMAS “is a technology we hope we never have to use”.
“But what we’ve seen internationally [is]… around 20 instances where aircraft of all different sizes have actually run into the EMAS beds,” he said.
“In every case, those aircraft have been recovered without damage and without a single injury to a passenger or crew.”
Queenstown is not immune to aircraft overruns, with a twin-engine Ansett New Zealand jet ending up in a paddock in 1990.
The incident was minor.
Sowry continued, “what we’re looking at doing here is essentially investing in an insurance policy on either ends of the runway, so that in the event of any sort of incident happening on the runway on take-off or landing, there’s that extra protection layer to ensure that an aircraft can safely be arrested.”
Around 5000 EMAS blocks need to be installed across both ends of the runway, with each block ranging in size from 150mm to half a metre.
The heaviest block on average weighs 250kg.
Wellington Airport has plans to install an EMAS system on its runway which is due to start in March.
