SWA 737 overrun at BUR - Dec 6 2018

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by tdracer

Looks like the EMAS did it's job. Makes you wonder why it's use isn't more widespread...

Like grooved runways in some countries, I strongly suspect it's a case of NIH (Not Invented Here).

Bizjets seem to be the most common EMAS users and the FAA has found that pilots will sometimes try to take the plane off the side rather than into the EMAS:

FAA Confirms Cases of EMAS Phobia

August 3, 2017

@aviationweek #aviationsafety

WASHINGTON—Pilots in some cases appear to be avoiding a special type of crushable concrete designed to gently stop an aircraft from overrunning the end of a runway—a finding that is puzzling to FAA officials.

“Of all the Engineered Material Arresting System (EMAS) saves, there’s a relatively small number where the aircraft curves off to the side,” said James Fee, the FAA’s manager for runway safety, at a recent safety conference sponsored by the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). “It is somewhat perplexing.”

First installed in 1994, EMAS is now in place at 106 runway ends at 67 airports that do not have the standard 1,000-ft. runway safety area buffer. Seven more pads are slated to be installed at six additional airports. Although tailored for the traffic mix at each airport, the design standard calls for stopping an aircraft traveling 74 kt. when it first enters the pad, which is as wide as the runway and several hundred feet long.

Khalil Kodsi, the manager of the FAA’s airport-engineering division, said there have been 12 EMAS “saves” to date, the most recent being an arrest in Burbank, California, when a Cessna Citation business jet with two pilots on board overran a runway and stopped in the EMAS pad.

Greg Wooley, vice president of flight operations for ExpressJet Airlines, said in many cases, the reasons have to do with publicity. “Probably 50% of the folks that I talk to say that if it’s going to be a low-energy event where they’d be 30–40 kt. at the end of the runway, [they question whether] they should take the EMAS or take it into the dirt,” Wooley said at the ALPA safety forum. “We don’t want to make the news, and there are some folks that think if you take the EMAS you’re making the news for sure.”

Alternatively, pilots think if they “take the dirt,” they might get “tugged back up onto the asphalt” and not make the news, he said. “That’s something that we’ve got to address and emphasize more—doing the right thing should be applauded and not be shamed,” Wooley said. “People have that fear of having the spotlight on them because they’ve gotten themselves into that situation.”

Another BUR EMAS save in 2006 with Alex Rodriguez' G-II: