Burbank Airport to Improve Runways

Installation of a special paving surface to prevent planes landing at Burbank Airport from skidding off the end of the runway could begin this fall, an airport spokesman said Saturday.

These runway improvements, if in place at the time, would have stopped a Southwest Airlines jet that slammed through a concrete barrier at the airport last year from plowing onto a busy thoroughfare, just missing a gas station, spokesman Victor Gill said.

“This would address a plane overrunning the runway, much in the way as a runaway truck lane works on the freeway,” he said.

The plan calls for collapsible blocks to be laid in the last 230 feet of the east/west runway. The blocks are less dense than concrete and are made of a material that turns to sand under the weight of a jet, Gill said.

The surface can stop any aircraft traveling up to 50 knots, or 58 mph, Gill said. The Southwest Airlines jet that overshot the runway on March 5, 2000, was traveling about 30 mph, he said.

About 80% of the $4.5-million runway safety improvement project is expected to be paid by the federal government. The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday awarded the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority $1.9 million to begin the installation.

Several of the 142 passengers and crew aboard the Southwest flight arriving from Las Vegas--including pilot Howard Peterson--were treated for minor injuries.

Peterson, who was fired by the airline last August, told National Transportation Safety Board investigators that the plane came in at too steep an angle and too fast at touchdown. The Boeing 737 careened off the runway through a fence and onto busy Hollywood Way, coming to a stop a few yards from a Chevron gas station.

In addition to laying the runway surface, the airport is attempting to buy the gas station and a neighboring dry cleaners that sit across Hollywood Way at the end of Runway 8. Reconfiguration of two airport parking lots on Hollywood Way round out the safety improvement project, Gill said.