I came home early today and was flipping through the channels when I saw a breaking news report on CNN about the Air France jet that crash landed at Pearson Airport. Immediately, my thoughts were on my colleagues working there at that time. Thankfully, the crash occured on the West end of the airport a distance away from where they were working and the news media is reporting there are no casualties on the flight.

Having gone to Pearson Airport myself several times and standing on the tarmac watching planes repeatedly land on the same runway as today's crash flawlessly, I can only imagine what the people standing in the same spot today felt when they saw the giant plane roll off the end of the runway and burst into flames.

One interesting thing I noticed when I was at the airport one time was that engineers designed obstacles that would prevent out of control planes from travelling unimpeded past the end of the runway and crashing into buildings or highways. For example, for one of the runway taking off over highway 401, there's an engineered hill at the end. However, for the runway where the accident occured today, there aren't any man-made obstacles. This leads me to believe engineers intended the valley where the plane ended up today to serve as a natural obstacle for out of control planes. It worked in stopping the plane but the difficulty the emergency services faced reaching the plane may raise some questions on whether there are better solutions and cause engineers to rethink future designs.