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High Point, N.C.-Area Airport Already Has Extended Safety Areas

Posted on: Monday, 19 December 2005, 21:00 CST

By Paul B. Johnson, High Point Enterprise, N.C.

Dec. 19--TRIAD -- Officials with Piedmont Triad International Airport took steps earlier this decade to help prevent an aviation tragedy such as the one earlier this month at Midway Airport in Chicago.

The Piedmont airport extended its safety area five years ago to provide extra room in the event a plane skidded off one of its two runways.

PTIA officials spent $2.3 million on the safety improvements.

An adequate safety area has been taken into account as the airport develops a third runway to accommodate the FedEx Corp. national cargo hub, said Henry Isaacson, chairman of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority. The hub is scheduled to open in three and a half years.

Safety areas at airports are important because "you never know when brakes will fail or there will be some mechanical problem that will cause an airplane to overshoot the runway," he said. Five years ago, PTIA officials arranged to close off a half-mile section of Regional Road between Bryan Boulevard and Lebanon Road on the southwest edge of the airport to extend the safety area. The area was extended by 1,000 feet. On Thursday in Chicago, National Transportation Safety Board investigators said the pilot of a Southwest Airlines jet needed 800 more feet to avoid crashing through a fence and onto a highway next to Midway Airport Dec 8. A 6-year-old boy in a car was killed when the nose of the plane collapsed onto the highway.

PTIA officials believe they have taken steps to prevent a similar accident from occurring here, said Isaacson, an attorney from Greensboro.

PTIA has never had any "close calls" similar to the incident that occurred earlier this month in Chicago, he said.

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Copyright (c) 2005, High Point Enterprise, N.C.

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FDX,

Source: High Point Enterprise

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