Eleven Hawai'i runways, including two at Honolulu airport, do not yet comply with Federal Aviation Administration safety standards that require "overrun protection" to prevent planes from skidding off runways.

A new report by U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., found more than half of U.S. commercial airports have runways that lack either a 1,000-foot margin at the end of a runway as a safety zone or an "arrestor bed" to slow overrunning aircraft.

Some of the busiest airports in the country — including Los Angeles International, Chicago's O'Hare International and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International — have more than one runway that doesn't meet safety standards, according to statistics supplied by the FAA.

Congress passed a law late last year requiring that airports meet the FAA overrun protection requirements by 2015, and the Hawai'i Department of Transportation is in preliminary discussions with the FAA about meeting that target, said Scott Ishikawa, spokesman for the state DOT.

But a spokesman for the FAA said the agency only requires the overrun protections "where practicable," and Ishikawa said the protections may be physically impossible to provide at some Hawai'i airports.

Ishikawa cited the example of the Lana'i airport, where the edge of one runway is at the lip of a gulch.

"Not every runway has the luxury of 1,000 feet for a safety zone," he said. "There may be physical limitations for certain runways that we'll have to look at."

At Honolulu International, the three largest runways do meet the FAA standards for safety areas, said FAA spokes-man Ian Gregor.

The smallest Honolulu runway is known as 4L or 22R, depending on which direction aircraft are using for takeoff, and has a safety area that is 400 feet short of the FAA standard in the 22R configuration, Gregor said.

That flaw is caused by a drainage ditch that is in the way, and the FAA and DOT are looking at two options to meet the FAA standard, Gregor said.

One possibility is to build over the drainage ditch to extend the safety area, and another is to shorten the usable length of the runway so that more space can be designated as the safety area.

That adjustment in the usable length of the runway would mean it is the responsibility of pilots to ensure they are able to take off within the shorter distance if they intend to use that strip, he said.

The FAA says it is diligently upgrading the runways. The agency expects that all of them will meet the standard by the 2015 deadline, according to FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.

"Today, 70 percent of commercial-service runways have a runway safety area within 90 percent of the standard," Brown said. She said 236 runways were improved as of Sept. 22.

At 325 airports — more than half of the 573 commercial airports in the United States — at least one runway lacks the 1,000-foot safety zone, according to the FAA's own figures. Almost half of all commercial runways — 507 of 1,017 — don't meet the safety standard.

Deadly airplane crashes can happen on runways because they're too short, improperly lit, poorly designed or lack safety equipment. A minor procedural error by a pilot or an air traffic controller can turn tragic if a vehicle or another airplane happens to be in the way.

Federal safety investigators are looking into three runway mishaps this week alone: An Alaska Airlines jet took off on the wrong runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport; two airliners clipped wings while taxiing at Newark Liberty International Airport; and another jet landed on a taxiway at Newark.

Wrong runways may have been used more frequently than the FAA previously thought. The agency searched 5.4 million records over 10 years and found flight crews said they were confused about runways 117 times, Brown said.

As a result of the data search, Brown said, the FAA is exploring ways to prevent pilot confusion.

Within the past year, two fatal commercial airline crashes involved runways.

In August, 49 people were killed when a Comair regional jet took off from the wrong runway at Lexington Blue Grass Airport in Kentucky.

In December, a 6-year-old boy in a car was killed when a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 overran a runway at Chicago's Midway Airport and plowed into a street.

There have been 45 fatal crashes because of aircraft overrunning runways since 1983, according to Lautenberg.

Part of the problem is that some airports were built in congested urban areas and have no room to lengthen their runways.

One solution is to install soft concrete beds at the end of a runway. Called Engineered Material Arresting Systems, or EMAS, they slow an airplane that rolls off the end of a runway.

Last month, a private jet carrying Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez overran a runway at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Calif., and was brought to a halt by an EMAS bed.