Queenstown Airport completes $23m safety system it hopes to never use

Queenstown Airport is the first in Australasia to install a safety system designed to stop aircraft from skidding off the runway. The engineered materials arresting system (EMAS) has been added to each end of the runway and is similar to a gravel trap on a motorway. The energy absorbing blocks are designed to crush under the weight of an aircraft, slowing it to a stop. Queenstown Airport CEO Glen Sowry had previously likened it to a “crème brulée”. Costing $23m, the airport said the work was “on schedule and within budget”. In total, 4870 EMAS blocks were installed covering the equivalent of 20 tennis courts on each end of the runway. They range in height from 10cm to 50cm, with the heaviest weighing 250kg. It was quite a logistical feat to get the blocks to Queenstown. First the airport had to undertake a “really big piece of work” to prepare each end of the runway. The blocks were designed and built on the east coast of the US and shipped to NZ through the Panama Canal and into Dunedin, and then trucked across to Queenstown. Queenstown Airport chair Simon Flood said the contractors were dealing with a system that was the “first of its kind in New Zealand”, and there were “a number of challenges”, “but the team responded with a combination of thoughtfulness and tenacity that ensured the issues, when encountered, were dealt with efficiently and the project's momentum was able to be maintained to a successful conclusion”. Queenstown Airport project manager Lydia Hartshorne said 100 people worked on the project, clocking up more than 100 night shifts.<br/>