Airport Expansion Update at T.F. Green; New Projects Underway

July 9, 2014 6:18 pm

Twitter: markcurtisABC6

Coming in for a landing at T.F. Green Airport will soon offer a new safety feature, especially for planes that touchdown, but have brake failure.

Construction is now underway for what’s known as the “EMAS” system.

Workers are putting in a safety bed made up of thousands of crushable concrete blocks.

“Worse case scenario is that you have a runaway aircraft, and it can’t stop. This stops the energy from the aircraft and stops it in the bed, so that it’s minimal damage to the aircraft,” said Brian Barrett, a project engineer for McFarland Johnson.

A corporate video shows how the concrete blocks, slow a plane down.

In Warwick the idea s to keep planes from going into the intersection near Airport and Post Roads.

ABC6 Chief Political Reporter Mark Curtis “This is the latest phase of the overall runway expansion project here at T.F. Green Airport. This particular phase costing eight–and–half million dollars.”

Dozens of people are working the construction site and airport officials say most of them are locals.

“We’ve got Lynch and some of the other workers here on-site that are Rhode Island companies and their workforce. About 85 to 90 percent of those employees are Rhode Island residents so that is great, too,” said Rebecca Bromberg from the Rhode Island Airport Corporation.

The entire airport construction plan is supposed to be complete in the next few years, with backers hoping it will make business – at and near T.F. Green – really take off.