Hands, Knees and BOOMPS-a-daisy …

Thursday, April 14, 2011

You’ve watched the video several times.

If you haven’t, here’s the news item about the Airbus 380 which clipped the tail of a small commuter jet.

Yes, it never should have happened.

Yes it’s not good.

But no, it is not quite as calamitous as the media would whip us into believing.

In the first place we ought not to be surprised that with about 90,000 take-offs per day (In 2007 the OAG reported that there were about 80,987 individual take-offs per day worldwide) planes will collide.

We don’t like that they collide, but we ought not to be surprised, and therefore ought not to be alarmed, if two planes make contact during taxiing.

Let’s face it, planes are never legally closer together than they are when they are standing outside the terminal building.

In the second place, although an Airbus gets close to 600mph in flight, taxiing away from a runway it is probably doing not more than 40 mph. (Remember that the energy in a moving rigid body is ½ x M x V2, so the velocity is a critical factor in energy-exchange).

In the third place, pilots have a lot going on during the first ten and the last ten minutes of flight. They especially have a lot on their minds when they are rolling along the ground.

From everything I’ve read, no-one was injured, and THAT’s a small miracle, considering the number of red-jacketed workers who service our planes, loading luggage, waving those ping-pong bats.

I note especially that no passengers are reported injured. Especially in the commute jet.

Either the commuter jet was empty, or everyone was wearing a seat-belt.

NOTE TO READER: BELT UP AT ALL TIMES THAT YOU ARE IN A CAR OR PLANE; THE SEAT BELT IS A PSSIVE DEVICE THAT MARRIES YOUR BODY TO THE MUCH LARGER AND HEAVIER BODY OF THE VEHICLE, PROTECTING YOU AGAINST ANY SUDDEN CHANGES OF MOMENTUM.

Yes, I just shouted at you.

Here’s where I express great shouts of joy:

HOORAY for the engineers.

The engineers built a plane that can withstand a hefty whack on the tail - laterally at that - and not fall to pieces.

Nowhere have I read praise for the design of the commuter jet; that it can withstand such a blow and translate the linear momentum into rotational momentum says a lot that is not being unsaid.

It reminds me of the plane that was landed in the Hudson river (“ Bird strike on both engines in New York air crash ‘a terrible coincidence’ “); a triumph of engineering that the plane would float for so long, even giving the pilot enough time to walk to the rear of the plane and double-check that everyone was out of the cabin.

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