There seems to be an awful lot of people out there who seem to think that it is unusual for an aircraft to be attacked by a piece of ground equipment. I have to tell you that this is far from the case. Sadly it is usually only the truly catastrophic events that reach the headlines. In my company hardly a week goes past without at least one event occuring at one of the nearly 70 airports that we serve.
To get the situation into perspective let me tell you a story. I recently taxied on to stand. One of the ground staff came on to the flight deck and asked me to come and look at a dent that she had spotted as we taxied in. I went to look. It was not a new dent nor was it particularly big but it was great that the young lady had spotted it and had brought it to my attention.
I showed her the "dent and buckle" charts and lists in the aircraft tech log and there, sure enough, was the dent that she had spotted. She was a bit surprised to note that this section of the tech log was 5 pages long.
I do not even want to get into whether this sort of ground-handling rash is caused by lack of training, dubious ground equipment or sheer incompetence but let me just reiterate what I said at the beginning, such damage is sadly incredibly common.
PS. The most bizarre incident that I remember was going out to Stand 22 at Gatwick in the crew bus when I was flying DC-10s for Fred. There was a Dan Air 727 on the next stand and the the No.2 (centre) engine was lying on the ramp! A catering truck had hit it from behind and had fractured the engine mounts. I would not have believed it to be possible but there it was for all to see!