Miami-Dade leaders debate runway changes after plane crash: ‘Go the extra step’

After a cargo plane overshot a runway and killed five people outside Miami International Airport, members of the county board overseeing that facility are considering whether to spend big on a potential safety upgrade. Some airports employ collapsible surfaces to slow or stop a plane that overshoots a runway — though that’s considered a back-up option when there isn’t space for the kind of 1,000-foot buffer that MIA has at the end of the runway. The Amazon cargo plane that sped past the end of a MIA runway collided with two vehicles, killing five and injuring three others who remained hospitalized Tuesday. Federal aviation regulations don’t require both the buffer and the collapsible surface — known as an Engineered Materials Arrestor System, or EMAS — and no U.S. airport has both, the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday in the wake of the Miami crash. Boston’s Logan airport is spending $110 million, mostly in federal dollars, to install EMAS at an airport that ends near Boston Harbor.

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