"Possible plans to extens over-run area"
Interesting point raised a couple of pages back, about possible plans to increase the over-run area at the end of the runway and fill the ravine.
Now I know it's not a great way of stopping an aircraft, but the ravine did stop the Airbus from carrying straight on across a crowded highway.
If the runway over-run area had been extended across the ravine, wouldn't it have been very likely that the aircraft would have gone straight onto the highway, impacting several cars filled with that old-fashioned, dangerous, avaiation fuel called PETROL, resulting in an almost instant inferno in which possibly all pax and crew, as well as a number of car drivers, would have been incinerated?
Just maybe the ravine did everyone (apart from the Airbus hull) a favour???
Is a runway extension designed for over-run constructed specially in some way to add retarding factors into its surface? (like the gravel "escapes" used to help runaway trucks on steep highway hills?)
(I'll just add my "well done" to the crew for the life-saving evac. You're trained for it, but everyone hopes you'll only ever have to serve coffee and tea. Would have lost a lot of souls if the evac had been slower)