A Delta airplane that landed at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport skidded off the runway and into a fence on Sunday February 18, 2007. The plane likely skidded because of the snowy weather. None of the 75 passengers were injured as a result of the skid, and passengers were shuttled back to the terminal by bus. The only damage in this incident was luckily to the plane and the fence.
This time Delta and the airport were lucky. This was not the case though in December 2005 in Chicago when a Southwest airplane skidded off the runway at Midway airport. The plane skidded into traffic hitting a car and killing a 6 year old boy.
After this accident and extensive investigation it was believed that snowy conditions caused the skid, which ultimatley resulted in a young child’s death. The death may have been avoided if instead of a fence, a crushable concrete bed was used. This bed would help to stop the overrun of the airplane into local traffic. This sounds like a good plan of action to prevent a plane from skidding too far, but what about preventing the skid in the first place? It appears additional precautions and regulations may need to be followed in order to prevent a skid from happening. The airline industry in the past several years has been scrutinized for it’s safety. A large amount of the public are passengers on airplanes. How to keep passengers safe and implementing procedures should be the airlines and FAA’s number one concern.
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