Airline safety and lawn mowing

A lot of time and money has been spent improving airport security since 9/11. Those indelible images of airliners melting into the World Trade Center are why we put up with lining up to take off our shoes and packing our shampoo in little baggies for inspection at the security gates.

But a tour of Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport on Wednesday pointed out that virtually every aspect of airport operation is aimed at preventing disasters that could have much more mundane causes.

Take mowing the grass: The airport keeps about 4,000 acres of grass well-trimmed, using monstrously huge and expensive mowers in eight hour shifts. This isn’t because they want to make the cover of Runway and Garden, but because tall grass can obscure ground markers pilots look for when steering their birds around the tarmac.

Birds are another big reason for keeping the grass short, according to the facility managers. Short grass is less habitable for mice and other critters that attract hawks. A hawk is not something a jet wants to intersect with during takeoff or landing.

Then there is the ice and snow. Security procedures guard against attacks that may never come, but we know it snows every winter. The airport spends about $400,000 on each of the huge plows, snow blowers and ice brooms used to clear the runways. Can you imagine what it would be like to land a fully loaded airliner on a patch of ice instead of a clean runway?

It cost $50 million alone just to build the catchment/recycling system for the anti-freeze used to de-ice the planes before they take off.