1

FINDINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS: 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIRPORTS SUMMER 2018 MEETING

Atlantic City, NJ | August 20, 2018

The Subcommittee on Airports of the FAA’s Research, Engineering, and Development Advisory 

Committee (REDAC) met on August 20, 2018, at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center 

in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

1 The Subcommittee had the opportunity to review the progress of 

the FAA’s Airport Technologies Research Program and provide comments regarding the 

Program’s priorities.

The Subcommittee felt that good progress had been made across the Program’s portfolio of 19

research project areas (RPAs) as shown below.

Safety & Planning RPAs Pavement RPAs

S1 Airport Planning & Design

S2 Airport Safety Data Mining

S3 Aircraft Rescue & Firefighting

S4 Wildlife Hazard Mitigation

S5 Visual Guidance

S6 Runway Surface Safety Technology

S7 Airport Safety & Surveillance Sensors

S9 Airport Research Taxiway

S10 UAS Integration at Airports

P1 National Airport Pavement Testing Facility

P2 National Airport Pavement Materials Research 

Center

P3 Field Instrumentation & Testing

P4 Advanced Materials

P5 Pavement Design & Evaluation

P6 Non-destructive Testing Technologies

P7 Software Program Development and Support

P8 Extended Pavement Life

Airport Noise & Environmental RPAs* New/Enhanced Facilities

N1 National Noise Survey

N2 DNL & Metrics Evaluation

N3 Sleep Disturbance

N4 Noise Mitigation

N5 Operations

E1 Environmental Tools and Guidance

Fire Safety Building

Pavement Lab Extension

Photo Laboratory

* Airport noise and environmental RPAs are being co-managed by the FAA Offices of Airports and Energy & 

Environment.

The Subcommittee remains supportive of the Program’s ongoing work and future research 

directions, which continue to emphasize foundational research to support (1) advisory circulars 

and design guidance promulgated by the FAA Office of Airports, (2) airport infrastructure 

enhancements currently eligible or prospectively eligible for federal grant funding under the 

Airport Improvement Program, and (3) U.S leadership in areas of airport safety, planning, and 

airport infrastructure.

The Subcommittee reviewed draft FAA responses to its Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 

recommendations and agreed that these recommendations could be closed pending the FAA 

Acting Administrator’s approval of these responses.

 

1 The Subcommittee had originally planned to meet on both August 20 and 21, but shortened the meeting 

due to a FAA Runway Safety Call-to-Action Meeting that took place on August 21.
2

The Subcommittee remains very concerned about ongoing pressure to reduce in FAA research 

and development funding.

2

Findings and Recommendations

The following findings and recommendations were developed during the Subcommittee’s 

deliberations. The Subcommittee does not believe that any of these require consideration by the 

FAA Acting Administrator. 

FINDING 1: The Subcommittee remains pleased that the FAA’s Airport Technology Research 

Branch has begun researching safety and design standards for commercial spaceports, but 

continues to feel that more substantial outreach is needed with the concurrent efforts of

commercial airspace aviation rulemaking committees (ARCs), principally the Spaceport 

Categorization ARC.

RECOMMENDATION 1: The Subcommittee recommends that the FAA’s Office of Airports 

together with the Airport Technology Research Branch directly coordinates with the Spaceport 

Categorization ARC and, to the extent it is pertinent, the Airspace Access Priorities ARC to 

ensure that their research informs (and is informed by) the ARCs.

FINDING 2: The Subcommittee was pleased to receive an update regarding the FAA’s 

Cybersecurity R&D Plan and learn more about how various FAA R&D programs are expected to 

support it. We agree with the FAA that there needs to be more awareness and involvement from 

airports in the development and refinement of this Plan.

RECOMMENDATION 2: The Subcommittee recommends that the FAA work with the 

Subcommittee members and other subject matter experts at airports to ensure that the FAA 

Cybersecurity R&D Plan appropriately reflects airport operators’ roles, responsibilities, and 

involvement in aviation cybersecurity in the United States.

FINDING 3: Over the past year, several U.S. States and municipalities have been focusing their 

attention on environmental contamination by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS),

classes of fluorinated hydrocarbon molecules that can lead to adverse health outcomes in 

humans.

3

In addition to their potential toxicity, most forms of PFAS do not readily breakdown in 

the environment and bio accumulates in those that are exposed to the substances.

One of the areas that PFAS is used is in aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) which is used to 

suppress and extinguish aircraft fuel fires. Under current FAA regulations, certificated airports 

are required to use fluorinated AFFF because of the high level of performance AFFF provides 

(e.g., ease of dispensing via current ARFF equipment, fire knockdown times, fire burn-through 

times).4 This said, over the last decade there have been numerous fluorine-free foams (3F) that 

have come onto the market and are being used at airports around the world.

 

2 Since the Subcommittee met in August, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 was enacted, providing 

R&D funding stability—at least from the perspective of Congressional authorizations—for Federal Fiscal 

Years 2018 through 2023, subject of course to future Congressional appropriation legislation.

3 https://www.epa.gov/pfas/basic-information-pfas#health

4 Since the Subcommittee met, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 was enacted. The Act includes a 

provision that requires the FAA to allow use of non-fluorinated foams provided they meet appropriate 

performance standards.
3

Research into the performance of these new foams has been spotty and often seems to be 

vendor-sponsored, leaving considerable uncertainty about the efficacy of these foams. There 

are also are a number of questions about the foam performance standards that the FAA uses—

which are taken from Military Specifications—that make it challenging to evaluate whether the 

safety benefits associated with AFFF outweigh the potential environmental hazards associated 

with PFAS. The Airport Cooperative Research Program’s (ACRP) Report 173 does state that 

fluorine-free foams meet the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization for fire 

extinguishing performance. The ACRP Report 173 also finds, “Fluorine-free foams have been 

shown to not have the same performance as their fluorinated counterparts. They are currently 

not able to provide the same level of fire suppression capability, flexibility, applicability, and 

scope of usage as AFFF firefighting foams. An analysis of the performance of two available 

fluorine-free foams found that they would need to be replenished three times more often than 

AFFF to provide the same level of fire protection.” The report also states, “Further research is 

warranted on whether AFFF alternatives available outside North America can or should be 

acceptable (e.g., through specification requirement changes, product approvals, or advances in 

foam development).” 

In addition, the Subcommittee notes that there are other areas in which the FAA can assist 

airports in limiting release of PFAS into the environment—specifically through reducing the need 

for or eliminating entirely ARFF equipment testing procedures that require discharge of PFAScontaining AFFF into the environment. Research into technologies and procedures would 

reduce the need for and quantity of AFFF released during ARFF equipment testing, inspections, 

and training has been underway under RPA S3 for several years and includes the evaluation of 

alternative foam proportioning system testing systems and revisions to ARFF equipment 

certification tests.

RECOMMENDATION 3: The Subcommittee strongly recommends that the FAA expedite 

completion of ongoing research efforts relating to foam proportioning systems. The 

Subcommittee also strongly encourages the FAA to revisit firefighting foam research and ensure 

that there are scientifically-based mechanisms/testing protocols for evaluating fluorine-free 

foams in the civil aviation sector, ideally using the newly-commissioned and state-of-the-art fire 

testing facility at the FAA Technical Center.

We also recommend that the Airport Technology Research Programs perform a gap analysis of 

research regarding the health and environmental hazards associated with fluorinated AFFF use 

at airports and work with the Subcommittee to determine how these gaps can be addressed 

either within or externally to the these FAA Research Programs.

FINDING 4: The Subcommittee appreciates the direction the FAA is receiving from the U.S. 

Department of Transportation regarding the alignment of FAA research with DOT’s broader 

strategic research priorities. We additionally note that ongoing research associated with 

unmanned aircraft systems and commercial space appear to be areas where there is significant 

existing alignment between FAA and DOT/Trump Administration priorities and directly involve 

airport research interests. Research into the facilitation of transcontinental supersonic aircraft 

operations, pavement research focusing on extending longevity of runways, taxiways, and 

aprons, and many of the airport safety research projects currently underway within the Airport 

Technologies Research program are similarly situated.

RECOMMENDATION 4: The Subcommittee recommends including discussions of the 

alignment of the Airport Technologies Research program with broader DOT and FAA strategic 

research goals in each of our face-to-face meetings.
4

FINDING 5: The Subcommittee found that the shortened agenda for this Subcommittee 

meeting—although driven by events beyond the Subcommittee’s control—did expedite 

discussion of key program topics and kept research program discussions at a more appropriate 

strategic level than prior meetings. In addition, the incorporation of web/teleconference access 

to the meeting ensured broader participation of Subcommittee members than would have been 

otherwise possible.

RECOMMENDATION 5: Although we do currently plan to meet for two days at our March 2019 

meeting, the Subcommittee recommends continuing the precedent set at the Summer 2018. 

This includes organizing the agenda for this meeting to focus on strategic reviews of Airport 

Technologies Research Program, its connections with other FAA research programs—notably 

the Environment & Energy Research Program, and alignment with DOT research priorities. 

We understand that this would come at the expense of more comprehensive and detailed 

reviews of individual research projects. To ensure that reviews of projects of particular interest 

are not missed, the Subcommittee proposes to identify 4-5 projects for deeper technical 

discussion in collaboration with the FAA Research Program leadership a month or so prior to 

each face-to-face meeting. 

The Subcommittee also recommends that the FAA continues to provide web/teleconference 

access for Subcommittee members that are unable to attend the meeting in person either due to 

financial or time constraints.

Future Meetings

The Subcommittee’s next meeting will take place at the FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City on 

February 26-27, 2019.