E.M.A.S to the Rescue

I have always as an outside viewer been interested in airline safety and what we can all do to protect peoples lives when we get in the air. As a regular viewer of the discovery program Mayday I have always been shocked at the smallest things that cause an airliner to come down. This blog is not about that but about how we can prevent overshootingss of runways. This may shock you but there is a proven way to avoid such disasters from happening.

In August of 2005 in my hometown of Toronto an Air France plane was about to touchdown at Pearson Airport after a long flight in from Paris. It was about 4 O'Clock and all of a sudden the cloudless sunny day became black as if it were midnight. On the ground I had to immedietly turnoff my TV as the thunderclouds appeared out of nowhere. Within five minutes after 4 nothing could be seen in my house or outside. At this same time rain started coming down and I would guess even today visibility was almost zero.

By about 4:30 the clouds had opened up as quicly as they had become black the sun was now shining. As I had turned the TV on I had it on CBC and there was a picture from a highway. At first I didn't know which highway it was, or which city because there was no indication on the network coverage. I had spotted that a plane had crashed but it wasn't untill a few minutes later that I found out it was in Toronto and it was next to highway 401.

After that original shock I saw the scene and imagined that there couldn't be any survivors from this, but miraculously as soon as that thought crepped into my head I started seeing people leaving the highway and entering into cars and leaving the sight. A half an hour later we got the outstading news that everyone on board had survived and thus the incident was forever known as the Toronto miracle. As the investigation got underway, it was obvious the plane hadn't landed past the runway, it had skitted past as it touched down.

The program Mayday talked about E.M.A.S or Engineered Materials Arrestor Systems, which is basically crushable concrete placed at the end of runways to stop Aircraft from overshooting a runway. Currently at Toronto's Pearson International as well as many others in this country do not have the E.M.A.S in place at their airports. I believe it is a must for all International Airports in the world let alone at Canadian Airports to have this system in place.

In the United States both Midway International in Chicago and Burbank Airport in Los Angeles have E.M.A.S. The installations occured after a major overshooting at their respective airports by an airbus. As an interesting sidenote Third Baseman Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees private plane was brought to a successful stop at Burbank using the system on October 13th 2006. The system works, it has proven to do so with real life situations. Although Toronto turned out to be miracle if it had turned out otherwise, this system would have already been put into place and 300 plus people would not be with their families today.

When will humanity learn, it shouldn't have to take a disaster to implement change. The installation of E.M.A.S at all International Airports is absolutly necessary if we are to prevent anymore disasters on landings at airports.

Thank you and please spread this posting around, so more people can be aware.