No weekend family outing to the park should include a child nearly stuffing a kite into an airliner’s whirling turbofan engine. Police at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC confiscated a kite from a group of people in a nearby park on Saturday. The agency received reports that the kite collided with a United Airlines plane landing at the airport. The incident didn’t damage the aircraft, but no one wants to take any chances after the fatal mid-air collision at the airport earlier this year.
The kite was sighted by the United flight crew, according to WTOP. The pilots told air traffic control, “It was over the park, about 100 feet over the ground. It looks like it’s right on the flight path.” The park in question is Gravelly Point, roughly 815 feet from the end of the runway. With the park directly underneath the approach path, kite flying is banned there. However, there were at least ten kites in the sky when the incident happened, the New York Times reported.
It’s better to be safe than sorry
Video footage of kites flying at Gravelly Point showed how close to the ground it took place. While the incident may seem harmless, the amount of harm the kite could have caused to the aircraft entirely depends on the material that the kite was constructed out of. Cheap plastic and nylon would be shredded by an engine’s front fan and sprayed out of the back. Some enthusiasts build carbon fiber rods and kevlar strings for their kites, which could do far more damage. A collision wouldn’t be catastrophic, but it would likely damage the compressor blades, which could cause a mechanical failure down the road if a technician didn’t spot it.
An airport spokesperson stated that the kite was returned to the family, and no charges were filed. Airport personnel and federal regulators are far more conscious of the surrounding airspace after an American Airlines regional jet collided with a US Army helicopter in January, killing all 67 people onboard both aircraft. Earlier this month, the FAA banned non-essential helicopter flights around Reagan National Airport after the fatal collision.