Why do people do a run up facing a fence, building or other ac?
Once upon a time, Essendon Airport had acres of space and plenty of open areas to do a run up. These days developers have boxed the apron in, a similar story for a lot of Australian city airports. I'm unsure of the specifics of this particular accident, but considering that developers' brains are wired to only see the runway requirement and not much else then it's no surprise they are taking every inch they can of this land parcel for themselves.