Daily Herald opinion: Planning and prevention: A safety feature kept a plane overshooting the runway in Wheeling from turning into a tragedy

An incident involving a plane overshooting a runway at Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling could have ended very differently Wednesday, given its midday timing and how close it came to traffic along Hintz Road.

There were two pilots and no passengers on board, yet no one was hurt — either in the plane or on the ground. Deputy Police Chief Michael Conway called the outcome ‘very, very fortunate.”

And while good fortune did indeed play a part, so did planning and prevention.

As our Russell Lissau reported, the twin-engine Gulfstream G150, owned by the Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management insurance company of Rolling Meadows, was on route from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. It came in for a landing just after noon on a runway located about 600 feet from Hintz on the north end and less than 400 feet from Palatine Road’s frontage road on the south.

The jet, however, went off the runway, drove onto the grass and then crashed through a perimeter fence. It came to a stop “right at the curb” for Hintz Road, Conway said.

Its nose was mere inches from the street.

Had the plane gone further, it could have collided with passing cars or landed in their path. Instead, a concrete safety system slowed the jet, likely saving lives and preventing more extensive — and expensive — damage.

As Lissau explained in a follow-up story, the Engineered Material Arresting System, installed on that runway a decade ago, features a graded bed of slightly raised concrete blocks that are designed to give way under a certain degree of pressure. That, in turn, can stop a jet when it overshoots the runway.

The airport’s executive director, Jeff Miller, told Lissau Thursday that the blocks helped decelerate the plane enough to keep it off Hintz, protecting those on the road and in the cockpit.

The system is available at a number of airports, including O’Hare and Midway. At Chicago Executive Airport, the safety feature — at both ends of that runway at a cost of about $7 million each — has been credited with more than one save.

That makes it money well spent.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating, and more information may follow. But this week, airport officials, local residents and drivers using the roads near Chicago Executive can be grateful for the safety modifications that worked as they were intended.

There is a bit of damage to address. But no lives were lost. No one was injured. For now, that’s something to celebrate.