What do all the things in this photo have in common?
It’s obvious it’s something related to aviation, right?
But it’s not a good thing. Rather, this photo is just a small sampling of items found recently on the ramp, taxiways, and runway at my home airport, Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (KDKX) in Tennessee. Most were probably dropped by a careless pilot or passenger or left on an aircraft surface during pre-flight and then forgotten.
Recently, I watched curiously as a line service tech drove slowly down the runway in a golf cart, as his passenger anxiously scanned the pavement. Seems he had left his iPad and iPhone on the horizontal stabilizer of a Cessna 172, and realized his predicament after landing at a nearby grass field.
The items were eventually found — the phone in a yard near the departure runway, and the iPad on the destination grass runway. Quite a trip!
But seriously folks, we can do better than this.
At the large commercial service airport where I worked for 12 years, we once found a trail of tools in the touchdown zone of our primary runway. Obviously some careless mechanic or pilot had left them forgotten on an aircraft surface, where they rode until dropping off during takeoff.
Fortunately they escaped landing traffic, which could have resulted in a dangerous high-speed tire blowout.
That’s why commercial service airports are required to develop a FOD — Foreign Object Debris — control program, and include twice-daily FOD inspections in their airfield inspection routine. And my home base, KDKX, has adopted this practice as well.
Next time you finish a walk-around inspection, before climbing in the plane take one last “broad sweep” look of the aircraft and be sure everything is clean and buttoned up.
Your fellow pilots will thank you, as will neighborhood homeowners.
Sounds a lot like my airport.
Once a number of years ago I was cleared for takeoff, but then heard a call “we’re committed.” That sounded rather ominous, so I decided to delay my takeoff. A DC-6 subsequently landed in front of us with two engines on one side out. After it cleared the runway, I was cleared for takeoff and started my takeoff roll. Just before lifting off, I heard a loud bang and aborted the takeoff. The front baggage door had opened and dumped a good part of the contents on the runway for a considerable distance. I was glad I had waited on the DC-6. Turns out, a spring on the latch was partially broken, but the latch still seemed to work fine, however without all of the spring working, the door wouldn’t stay latched under stress. The tower gave us permission to walk up and down the runway to clean up the mess.
We had to move our airplane to another airport due to the old macadam surface deteriorating and popping stones up. Too many prop dings plus we had a horizontal stab damaged by a careless lawnmower. Complaints to the airport went ignored so we pulled out.
Forgot to add that we started doing a FOD walk from the tie down all the way out to the taxiway entrance picking ups stones and other debris.
Sounds a lot like my airport. dangerous situations being ignored FOD all over the place. I hesitate to indicate the identifier for my airport because the people who run the place are very spiteful vengeful people.
As far back as my Army flying in the ‘60’s, my NH FBO in the 90’s and teaching both A&P and flying today I’ve stressed the issues of FOD. If, as an Army instructor, I found a tool on pre flight the civilian contract mechanic, if maintenance could identify the culprit, lost his job on the spot. While I made found tools known to the maint folk I never turned them in. They made their warning point to the mechs and I can still identify a few of those in my tool box today.
Hmmm . . .unfortunately not everyone is as perfect as you think you are!
In the mid 60’s my family took off in our Apache and the cargo door (right side) sprang open as we were clearing the end of the runway. Nicely for my dad/pilot the two bowling balls we had in their bags were secured behind the normal luggage in the cargo area and it was LEFT traffic. Like one of the other comments, it latched and looked closed but the tension spring was broken. Yikes, could have been bad!