On December 22, 2009, an American Airlines flight from Miami to Kingston, Jamaica overran the runway at around 65 miles an hour, went through a fence, across a road, and came to rest on the beach.
There are many notable things about this accident. Thankfully no one died, the weather wasn’t particularly poor, the flight crew was experienced and respected, it was an 8,000-foot runway in good condition, and there was nothing of note wrong with the airplane. But what’s most amazing about it is that you probably don’t even remember it happened.
Runway overrun accidents are so common we tend to quickly forget about them. No one is immune from an overrun. They happen in the airlines, are a scourge on the record of corporate aviation, and most of us can point to multiple times we’ve seen it at our local airport.
Pilots flying on instrument approaches are particularly susceptible to overruns for a number of reasons. Consider your own instrument experience. Breaking out on the approach feels like the completion of a successful and stressful portion of the flight, and many pilots immediately relax and consider the landing—if not a given—certainly a lesser challenge. Even if the approach configuration has gone out the window and the airplane is significantly too fast, there’s a heavy reluctance to go missed. After all, that portion of the flight is done. Over. Having to go missed and once again go through the stressful approach sequence is a daunting prospect that keeps many from admitting defeat and trying again.
What’s more, we tend to train missed approaches as a response to an unsuccessful instrument approach, not a botched landing. When an instructor calls for a missed, it’s often at approach minimums with the hood still on, simulating that the runway never appeared. Have you ever “broken out” on a simulated approach, descending another 100 feet while 20 knots too fast, and then had to go missed? If not, you’re missing a critical element of avoiding a runway overrun.
Weather is also a major factor that we don’t account for in training. The American Airlines flight landed 4,100 feet down the runway, in part because there was a 14-knot tailwind. We’re constantly drilled that circling approaches are dangerous. So much so that some airlines and corporate flight departments don’t allow them. Their associated rules are complex, and flying below pattern with lousy weather doesn’t feel like a safe place to be. But rare is the airport that has good instrument approaches to every runway.
Which often leaves us with the option of having to circle or land with a tailwind. Yet because we tend to train on nicer days that require us to fit into the traffic flow, most of us have little experience landing with a tailwind.
To recap, we don’t like to go missed after successfully breaking out, we probably haven’t trained it, we don’t like to circle but also haven’t trained landing with a tailwind, and most of us don’t fly on rain- or snow-covered runways until we have to. Maybe it’s impressive we don’t have more overruns.
Reducing the chance of an overrun involves the same strategy as reducing almost any type of accident—better training and risk management. Look at the realistic risks of an overrun—too much energy, a poor runway surface, a tailwind, and a short runway—and consider ways to train all those scenarios. Then incorporate those risks into your real-world decision-making. Start by looking at the aircraft performance as it relates to runway length. Let’s assume you have a perfect approach and break out at 200 feet, on speed, and right on the glideslope. You still have to slow down to make VREF at 50 feet. Can you easily lose that speed in 150 feet? Now imagine you are high and fast. Or that there’s a tailwind. Or that the runway is wet. The FAA has a great advisory circular (91-79) that details all these risks. It’s eye-opening reading. Among the recommendations is to add 20 percent to your landing distance for every 10 knots of tailwind, 200 feet to every 10 feet above the 50-foot threshold crossing height, and 15 percent for general pilot skill and other factors.
A quick calculation shows that flubbing the approach and coming in 50 feet high with a 10-knot tailwind nearly triples the landing distance. In an airplane with a ton of energy, it’s easy to see how quickly things get out of hand.
