Foam path

Foam path

A foam path is the aviation safety practice of spreading a layer of fire suppression foam on an airport runway prior to an emergency landing. Originally, it was thought this would prevent fires, but the practice is now discouraged.

The U.S. FAA recommended foam paths for emergency landings beginning in 1966, but withdrew that recommendation in 1987, although it did not bar its use. In 2002, a circular recommended against using pre-foaming except in certain circumstances. In particular, the FAA was concerned that pre-foaming would deplete firefighting foam supplies in the event they were needed to respond to a fire. Also, foam on the runway may decrease the effectiveness of the landing airplane's brakes, possibly leading to it overshooting the runway.

Foam is still used in aviation firefighting, usually in conjunction with Purple-K dry chemical.

External links

* [http://www.boeing.com/commercial/airports/faqs/runwayfoamrequirements.pdf Runway foaming requirements] - Boeing recommendations to airplane operators (PDF)
* [http://www.faa.gov/airports_airtraffic/airports/airport_safety/certalerts/media/cert0204.rtf CertAlert No. 02-04] - FAA circular from 2002 recommending against runway foaming (rtf)
* [http://www.airdisaster.com/download/737gear.shtml Foam landing video] - Piedmont Airlines (now US Airways) 737 lands in a foam path in the 1980s


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • foam path — A path of fire extinguisher foam laid on a runway by firefighters to assist an aircraft in an emergency landing by minimizing the risk of fire from metal scraping against the runway surface. Also called a foam carpet …   Aviation dictionary

  • foam path — A path of fire extinguisher foam laid on a runway to assist aircraft in an emergency landing …   Military dictionary

  • foam carpet — A layer of foam put on the runway by firefighters to reduce the fire risk and cushion the impact of an aircraft making a wheels up landing. Also called a foam strip or a foam path …   Aviation dictionary

  • foam core —    or foam board    A strong, stiff, resilient, and lightweight board of polystyrene laminated with paper on both of its sides. It may be any of several thicknesses, in any of a variety of colors. It is often employed as a surface on which to… …   Glossary of Art Terms

  • Fire fighting foam — Firefighters sprayed foam on structures in the Mammoth Hot Springs complex on September 10, 1988 during the Yellowstone Fires. Fire fighting foam is a foam used for fire suppression. Its role is to cool the fire and to coat the fuel, preventing… …   Wikipedia

  • Spin foam — In physics, a spin foam is a topological structure made out of two dimensional faces that represents one of the configurations that must be summed to obtain a Feynman s path integral (functional integration) description of quantum gravity. It is… …   Wikipedia

  • spin foam — noun A topological structure made out of two dimensional faces that represents one of the configurations that must be summed to obtain a Feynmans path integral description of quantum gravity …   Wiktionary

  • Denez Prigent — in 2005 Background information Born 17 February 1966 (1966 02 17) (age 45) Santec …   Wikipedia

  • Physical Sciences — ▪ 2009 Introduction Scientists discovered a new family of superconducting materials and obtained unique images of individual hydrogen atoms and of a multiple exoplanet system. Europe completed the Large Hadron Collider, and China and India took… …   Universalium

  • Space Shuttle — STS redirects here. For other uses, see STS (disambiguation). This article is about the NASA Space Transportation System vehicle. For the associated NASA STS program, see Space Shuttle program. For other shuttles and aerospace vehicles, see… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”