Four months after a plane slid off a runway at Midway Airport, Chicago submitted plans to the federal government Tuesday to build beds of crushable concrete at the ends of Midway's runways to slow planes that overrun their landings.

The city's request to the Federal Aviation Administration for approval and funding for the key safety initiative comes after a Southwest Airlines plane skidded off a slick runway during a snowstorm Dec. 8 and struck vehicles on Central Avenue.

Joshua Woods, a 6-year-old Indiana boy, was killed when the Boeing 737-700 crushed the car he and his family were riding in.

Construction could begin as early as this year on the aircraft-arresting system if the FAA approves the plan, said Erin O'Donnell, the city's managing deputy aviation commissioner at Midway.

"We believe we can solve this safety issue within the confines of the airport using the aircraft-arrester beds," O'Donnell said. "No additional land needs to be acquired."

The system is made of light, foamlike bricks of cellular concrete material designed to collapse under aircraft weight, absorb the forward energy of the plane and provide a quick, controlled deceleration.

Approaching Runway 4L at Midway Airport

The material is strong enough to walk on, permitting passengers and crew to exit an aircraft safely and for the plane to be removed without damage, according to the manufacturer, Engineered Arresting Systems Corp.

The bricks would be laid out in rows of about 200 to 300 feet long, depending on how much space exists at the end of each runway.

The FAA has approved similar systems at 14 airports, and seven more are being planned or designed, officials said.

FAA officials said Tuesday that they are encouraged by Chicago's proposal, calling it "a step in the right direction." But the agency needs time to evaluate the plan, said FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro.

He said the agency would want to test how the shorter length of the concrete beds would slow or stop different types of planes at varying speeds. The standard aircraft-arresting system extends up to 600 feet at airports with the room.

To get FAA approval, Midway will need to receive special clearances to relocate navigational equipment at the ends of the runways--4 Right, 22 Left, 13 Center and 31 Center--where the aircraft-arresting system would be installed. Those runways accommodate the Boeing 757, the largest plane serving Midway, a 1-square-mile airport surrounded by neighborhoods.

Also, the aircraft-arresting system installed at Midway would be set back about 35 feet from the end of each runway, only about half the standard minimum distance of 75 feet. This would create challenges to protect the rows of soft bricks from the jet-engine blast of planes taking off every day.

City officials expressed confidence that a protective coating that has been successfully tested at LaGuardia Airport in New York can be used at Midway to preserve the bricks.

"The city would like to move forward with the installation ... at Midway," Patrick Harney, Chicago's acting aviation commissioner, wrote in a letter dated Tuesday to Jeri Alles, FAA airport division manager in the Midwest. "The city requests that the FAA reserve the appropriate grant funding for the city's forthcoming grant application."

The proposed improvements at Midway would cost up to $40 million, the city estimates.

Midway is among almost 300 U.S. commercial airports that do not comply with the FAA's minimum 1,000-foot safety zone at the ends of runways to provide extra protection to planes that overshoot their landings. Congress recently passed a law requiring all airports to comply or provide alternative safety methods by 2015.

The landlocked Midway cannot expand to provide 1,000-foot safety zones, the city told the FAA in 2004.

Midway's longest runway, 31 Center, where the Southwest accident occurred, is 6,522 feet--already considered short by modern airport standards. Reducing the length of any Midway runway has been ruled out.

The city estimated it would cost $200 million to $300 million to acquire the property off the airport needed to build runway safety areas. The city said it would require condemning 350 to 700 residential buildings and 80 to 130 commercial buildings.

The aircraft-arresting system was considered the next-best alternative.

Yet the runway safety enhancements now planned at Midway reflect an about-face on the city's part.

After the Southwest accident in December, Mayor Richard Daley defended Midway's "wonderful record of safety" and said no changes were warranted due to one major accident.

City aviation officials also said that based on FAA criteria, it was not practical to construct standard 1,000-foot runway safety areas or a standard 600-foot aircraft-arresting system at the space-constrained Midway.

The Southwest accident is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. A fact-finding hearing may be held this summer, officials said.

Planes overrunning runways have posed serious safety threats at airports worldwide. Seven planes have skidded off runways in the U.S. and Canada from October 2004 to February 2006, killing eight people and injuring 34 others, records show.

In March 2000, a Southwest plane ran off the end of a runway in Burbank, Calif., smashed through a blast fence and came to rest on a highway outside the airport. There were no serious injuries. The Burbank airport later installed an aircraft-arresting system.

One of the worst recent accidents occurred in June 1999, when an American Airlines jetliner overran the runway at the Little Rock National Airport in Arkansas, killing the captain and 10 passengers.

Three potentially deadly accidents have been averted at Kennedy International Airport in New York thanks to the aircraft-arresting system, the FAA said.

An expert on disaster planning said he is not surprised that Chicago reconsidered its past position and now wants to install the new system.

"The mayor's comment that a crash like the Southwest incident had never happened before at Midway is really not the best way to reduce the risk," said Gunnar Kuepper, chief of operations at Emergency & Disaster Management Inc., a California-based consulting agency for government and private firms.

"You must find a balance between the costs of safety and the benefits of reducing risk. Either that, or you stop flying."

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jhilkevitch@tribune.com