What is EMAS?

If you haven’t noticed yet, a lot of the things I post about are things I am actively learning. Usually something I encounter while flying somewhere and I think, “Wow, I wonder what that is?” or “Cool, I never knew that” Take for instance, today’s post about EMAS.

I ran into EMAS (not litterally) while flying into JFK. If you look at a approach plate for JFK and the end of runway 4 R, you will notice a large diagonal pad entitled EMAS. A little more searching in your chart Glossary will tell you that EMAS is a “Engineered Materials Arresting System.” I generally knew that EMAS is collapsible concrete meant to help stop a aircraft but like always, I needed to learn more.

A little time on Google and I found a website for the manufacturer of that concrete, ESCO. ESCO, which stands for Engineered Arresting Systems Corporation, has been engineering and manufacturing arrestor beds for military applications for a long time, it is only recently (the 90s) that they have begun to assist the civilian world in manufacturing beds that comply with all the requirements for a overrun area for a part 139 airport. Turns out that EMAS is “is consisted of a bed of cellular cement material manufactured in the form of engineered block components that are strategically placed at the overrun end of a runway.”

ESCO’s website has a lot of really neat information about EMAS areas. In fact, they have a pretty nice video explaining EMAS. The only problem is the video is like 8 minutes long so I cut it down to just the good stuff which is about 1:48 or so. If you want to see the rest of the video you can visit ESCO’s website.