Why can’t we use CATOBAR-adjacent tech on airliners to stop runway overruns in winter ops?
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Many runways use an arrestor system at the end of runways. But they’re passive devices where the weight of the plane crushes the runway surface, essentially digging the plane’s landing gear into the ground and slowing it that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_system
Naval aircraft are significantly heavier than their ground based counter parts to deal with the insane forces involved in the landing with the arrestor cable
The F35A and F35C are good comparisons for this. The F35C has a 34,500 lb dry mass while the F35A has a 29,000 lb dry mass. That’s a 19% increase in dry mass for no increase in fighting power. It carries the same payload, has a lower thrust to weight ratio and lower G limit making it significantly less maneuverable.
But it can land on a carrier!
You’d be making every jet liner significantly heavier costing huge amounts of fuel for something that will almost never be used.
a) It isn’t a big problem to begin with.
b) Commercial plane landing gears are not designed for it.
c) Commercial pilots are not trained for it.
So there is the cost of the system itself (for every airport?), the cost and weight penalty to beef up landing gears (if possible? for every aircraft?), the cost of maintaining such a system that will rarely be used and the cost of training pilots.
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