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FINDINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS: 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIRPORTS SUMMER 2019 MEETING

Atlantic City, NJ | July 30-31, 2019

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

Committee (REDAC) met on July 30-31, 2019, at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center 

in Atlantic City, New Jersey. 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. This program encompasses a 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 several cycles of its recommendations and 

agreed that these recommendations could be closed pending the FAA Administrator’s approval 

of these responses. The Subcommittee strongly encourages the FAA to provide more timely 

review and finalization of its responses to our recommendations as unapproved drafts extend 

back over a year to the Subcommittee’s Winter 2018 meeting.

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 Administrator. 
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FINDING 1: The Subcommittee reviewed the FAA Research Landscape, which was presented 

by Shelly Yak and Eric Neiderman and is supportive of this strategic approach to prioritizing 

FAA research and development activities. Subcommittee members view the Research 

Landscape as a key mechanism to identifying and motivating crosscutting research activities—

those that involve multiple FAA lines of business and program areas. The Subcommittee 

believes that it—and other REDAC subcommittees—should continue to be involved with 

development of the Research Landscape and, more importantly, involved with translating the 

research needs articulated within it into meaningful research projects.

RECOMMENDATION 1: The Subcommittee recommends allocating time during each of its 

semi-annual meetings for discussion of the Research Landscape, with an eye towards providing 

recommendations and guidance regarding how the Airport Technology Research & 

Development Branch can move airport safety, planning, design, and engineering research 

priorities forward.

FINDING 2: The Subcommittee appreciates the work that the Airport Technology Research & 

Development Branch is doing regarding unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) focused both on (1) 

facilitating authorized UAS operations on and near airports for the benefit of airports and their 

users and (2) means, methods, and technologies to detect and mitigate threats posed by 

unauthorized UAS operations on or near airports. With respect to the latter topic, UAS 

disruptions at multiple airports worldwide (most compellingly at London Gatwick Airport in 

December 2018 and the fortunately unsuccessful UAS “protest” on the part of the Heathrow 

Pause activist organization) and UAS-enabled attacks on infrastructure (most notably the 

September 2019 attack on oil production facilities in Saudi Arabia) have raised significant 

concerns for airport operators across the U.S. Urgent action is needed to provide airport 

operators with better tools and guidance regarding how to address threats posed by 

unauthorized UAS operations.

RECOMMENDATION 2: Although UAS issues—especially those associated with unauthorized 

UAS activity on or near airports—cut across multiple FAA research programs as well as those of 

other federal agencies, the Subcommittee recognizes that the Airport Technology Research & 

Development Branch has a leading role in developing performance standards and use guidance 

for airport-deployable UAS detection systems if these systems will be eligible for FAA grant 

funding. We strongly recommend that the FAA expedite this UAS detection system research.

The Subcommittee also strongly supports ongoing research into airport UAS use cases and 

research & development activities by other FAA lines of business regarding UAS detection, 

tracking, interdiction, and traffic management.

FINDING 3: The Subcommittee—and the broader community of airport operators—continues to 

be extremely concerned about a broad range of issues associated with the use of per- and 

polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in aircraft fire fighting agents. PFAS are a class of fluorinated 

hydrocarbon molecules that have been linked to adverse health outcomes in humans.

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In the airport context, PFAS are used in aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) to suppress and 

extinguish aircraft fuel fires. Under current FAA regulations, certificated airports are required to 

use AFFF because of the high level of performance it provides (e.g., ease of dispensing via 

current ARFF equipment, fire knockdown times, fire burn-through times). This said, over the last 

 

1 https://www.epa.gov/pfas/basic-information-pfas#health
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decade there have been numerous alternative foams that have come onto the market and are 

being used at airports around the world.

The Airport Technologies Research Program does have a research program currently underway 

to evaluate the performance of fluorine-free fire-fighting agents and Subcommittee members 

were provided with the opportunity to tour the new fire testing facility under construction at the 

FAA Technical Center during our Summer 2019 meeting.

RECOMMENDATION 3: The Subcommittee reiterates its recommendation that the FAA 

proceed with all due speed with defensible research into the performance and use of 

alternatives to AFFF in the civil aviation sector including completing and commissioning its new 

fire research facility at the Technical Center. We also request that the FAA provide updates prior 

to Subcommittee meetings if unexpected events or circumstances delay this research.

We also recommend that the FAA coordinate its firefighting agent testing research with subjectmatter experts in industry, including representatives from the National Fire Protection 

Association (NFPA) and airport rescue and fire-fighting professionals. To this end, we suggest 

that the FAA consider establishing an expert advisory panel similar to expert panels that have 

been established for airfield pavement research and aircraft braking friction research. Doing so 

will help to ensure consensus regarding research approaches early, before resource-intensive 

data collection efforts commence.

Future Meetings

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

March 3-4, 2019.