Roanoke airport reopens runway

Last week, Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport reopened a runway that had been closed since September after a regional commuter jet overshot it and ended up being stopped by the airport’s safety system infrastructure.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued an incident statement about CommuteAir ERJ145 flight 4339, operating as United Express, that landed long at the Roanoke airport on Sept. 24 around 10 p.m. In it, the agency credits the EMAS with the jet being “safely stopped.”

The plane was stopped by the airport’s engineered material arresting system (EMAS), a bed of customized cement material at the end of a landing strip designed to crush under the weight of an aircraft that has overrun the runway, providing a controlled deceleration.

Representatives from Runway Safe, the Swedish company that manufactured the EMAS, visited the Roanoke airport following the incident and removed damaged EMAS blocks from the end of Runway 16-34, according to Alexa Briehl, an airport spokesperson.

It will likely take months for the system’s replacement blocks to arrive and be installed, she stated.

Runway 16-34, one of two at the airport, reopened on Oct. 6 at 3:15 p.m., according to Briehl.

That day, the FAA posted a Notice to Airmen — an announcement containing information essential for flight operation personnel — noting that the EMAS on Runway 16-34 in Roanoke is now “nonstandard.”

Until the EMAS blocks are replaced, pilots, airlines and air traffic controllers will decide whether jets use Runway 16-34, Briehl stated. She noted that she has seen aircraft using the runway since it reopened.

Between April and May 2024, the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport had its current EMAS installed. It replaced a previous EMAS, which was installed in 2004 and rehabilitated in 2012, according to the airport.

For the most recent installation, Branch Builds — a construction unit of the Roanoke-based Branch Group — planned and coordinated the installation of 4,708 of Runway Safe’s EMAS blocks. Branch worked with Boland’s North, a New York-based specialty contractor, on the project.

“We had, I think, 57 days to do it, and we worked around the clock,” Scott Webber, a Branch project manager, recalled.

Webber learned about the rough landing in Roanoke from a news report at about 11:30 p.m. the night of the incident. He quickly texted his co-workers, including Travis Cooper, another project manager who’d worked on the installation. Both men were awed that they contributed to a project that kept the plane’s 53 passengers safe.

“Everything worked perfect on it, and nobody got hurt,” Cooper said.