posted
Tonight a passenger jet making an emergency landing at Chicago's Midway airport slid off the runway. It crashed through a fence, ending up on the street where it struck 2 cars.
I just saw this on my local news. A child in one of the cars died.
Posts: 4569 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
That's a real shame. When I lived in North Hollywood, a jet failed to take off from the Burbank airport and went through the fence and onto Hollywood Way, barely missing cars and stopping right before a gas station.
Strangely enough, the gas station is no longer there.
Posts: 561 | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Are they now saying it was an emergency landing? On CLTV (Chicago all-news station) and on WGN (another Chicago station), they were saying "hard landing", which my private pilot father descrbed as intentionally bouncing the plane to bleed kinetic energy (typically forward speed).
I finally turned it off about 9:30 when I realized we were getting a prerecorded loop because of lack of new information. Until NTSB shows up (sometime tomorrow), there's very little that can be officially released to the media because it's all "part of the investigation". Heck, they can't even move the plane out of the middle of a busy street! I'm so glad my commute takes me nowhere near Midway.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Also, I have to point out that we're going to spend a huge amount of money investigating this tragedy, while we pay comparatively little attention to the 42,000 deaths due on public roads nationally.
Why? Because it involved an airplane. This death, which killed a child in a car on a city street will get 100x the attention from state and federal investigators of a death across town in Chicago earlier in the day.
And I'm not saying we shouldn't investigate airplane crashes and figure out how to avoid them. Nor am I saying that the federal response to air disasters is overblown.
I am saying that we don't put enough priority on the more common deaths arising from roadway crashes.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I am sorry for the death of the child, but considering that there was only one death when concievably the passengers on the plane could have died along with more people in cars.
In many ways, relatively, this is a 'good' outcome rather than a horrible one.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'll completely agree on that count, Teshi, and that was one of the comments that the anchor was repeating all evening. "With weather conditions what they are, and with where this happened, it's a miracle that injuries are as few as they are" (prior to the confirmation of death, I couldn't watch anymore after that).
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I read an article which said that hard landings are the norm at that aiport, as its runways are very short. (Built before the age of the jet).
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
...and also that there's something they can do to create a buffer zone that hasn't been done yet.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Imogen, I heard the same thing today. And because the airport is in the middle of residential neighborhoods with only a 4-lane surface road separating the steel retaining wall and houses, there's no place they can expand short of invoking eminent domain.
The story I was hearing today that mentioned this was surrounding an unrelated investigation (I belive by the FAA but I could be wrong) that found nearly 300 airports across the country to be lacking in an appropriate buffer zone at the ends of their runways.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I grew up a mile east of Midway airport, and see it five times a week as I catch my train into work at the Midway train station.
Midway is a nice little airport. I like it a lot, and prefer to fly out of there. But yes, the runways are SHORT. There's a busy intersection on the southeast corner of the airport, and the planes go RIGHT over that intersection when they are landing. We're talking "so low it looks like it's going to hit that building!" low.
The entire airfield is about a mile square. They did build a new terminal across the street from the airfield, but it merely connects to the old terminal to give them more space for administration and services.
As to creating a buffer zone...well, I'm really not sure HOW they could do that, without tearing down houses and doing some major reconstruction to the roads around the airport. It's possibly--they redid a portion of Cicero avenue during the building of the new terminal, and it's really, really nice--but yeah, it'd take a LOT of work, and people would lose their homes. There's a bit of empty space on the north side of the airport, but not much, and it's used by long-term parking. Otherwise, there's houses and businesses right across the street from the airfield on all four sides.
And yeah, landings at Midway tend to be hard. I'm so used to it, though, that I don't think they're bad at all. Just a jolt as it hits ground, followed by a rapid deceleration (as my sisters and I help "stop" the plane by bracing our arms on the seat in front of us ). I'd call the landings more "short" than "hard".
Oh, and from what I understand of the airport, there's reinforcements and buffers at the end of all the runways, to help stop the plane in the event of an emergency. I haven't read many news articles about the crash yet, but I take it the plane slid off the runway? It's possible it slid past the area of the wall that was reinforced, then.
Posts: 1805 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Nope, I was wrong--from photos here, you can tell it slid right through the barrier at the end of the runway.
Posts: 1805 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:As to creating a buffer zone...well, I'm really not sure HOW they could do that, without tearing down houses and doing some major reconstruction to the roads around the airport.
The thing I was reading said there's collapsable concrete or something they can use at the end of the runway which slows planes dramatically, and has stopped planes from dangerous run-overs in New York 3 times already. Several airports use it, but many more with no room to expand are not yet, although a bill was just passed that all airports must either do that or add extra space by, I think it was 2010 (although I could be wrong.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
Ultimately, I have to say that the problems are multiple. I heard a pilot/commentator on CNN talking about the following: - short runways - instrument landings use up the first 1000 feet or so by guiding the plane to touch down some safe distance from the beginning of the runway - Midway doesn't have any real barriers that would stop a plane -- the collapsing concrete is one that is being implemented, there are others. - the pilot may have made some mistake.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
). I'd call the landings more "short" than "hard".
