Runway incursions by aircraft or service vehicles aren’t the only hazards on the ground at airports. One of the more spectacular crashes in recent years—the flaming wreckage of an Air France Concorde in Paris in July 2000—was caused by a small piece of debris on the runway. The metal strip, which fell off a Continental DC-10 that had just departed, punctured the tires on the Concorde as it was taking off; the tires then burst and punctured the fuel tank.

Until now, a visual inspection of the runway was the only way to detect such foreign objects. But at Providence’s T.F. Green Airport, the University of Illinois’ Center of Excellence in Airport Technology, in partnership with the FAA, is trying out a system called Tarsier Foreign Object Debris technology, created by a defense/security firm called QinetiQ. The same system is in use at Vancouver International Airport and is being installed at Dubai International Airport. It has radar units in small towers that scan the runway surface 24 hours a day. If they find something that shouldn’t be there, an alarm sounds and airport personnel investigate. QinetiQ says it works in all weather conditions.

A similar system from another vendor, Stratech Systems, was tested at Singapore’s Changi Airport and was reportedly able to detect debris as small as two to four centimeters in size from 300 meters away. The University of Illinois team reportedly plans to test that same system, called iFerret, at Chicago O’Hare.

-JG