[markdown]

What a lame comment. This isn't how aviation safety is managed. You expect planes to land halfway down the runway at high speed and out of control. It's an eventual certainty.

> In SFO you'll end up in the bay or hit the terminal depending on the orientation. In Toronto you'll crash into a highway.

Ending up in a bay or crashing into a highway would likely have resulted in far less loss of life.

[munchler]

And hitting the terminal would likely have resulted in far more loss of life. Are airport designers supposed to consider this as "an eventual certainty"?

[scripturial]

Yes, but there is no terminal at the end of this runway, so it’s irrelevant. The question is, wouldn’t it be safer to design airports to avoid having large concrete structures at the end of a runway in case there is a landing problem.

[kijin]

Terminals are generally located to the side of a runway at some distance, where a plane aligned with the runway is unlikely to hit them no matter how fast it's going.

Not sure if there's a regulation that requires this kind of arrangement, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are stricter rules about structures that cross a plane's usual trajectory.

[hmcq6]

This is a slippery slope that leads to infinitely long runways.

Any length of runway you agree on can still fail. As you just said, it's an eventual certainty.

Rather than fixating on what didn't cause the crash how about we spend that energy on finding out why this flight unlike 99.99% of flights couldn't stop in the allotted space.

If they were gonna land halfway down the runway why didn't they just do another go-around? Did the thrust reversers not work? Doesn't the 737-800 have a backup way of dropping the landing gear?

[SR2Z]

Crashing into a highway would have resulted in similar loss of life. Airplanes are only barely safe when they land without gear, and almost any obstruction is going to be more solid than a machine that's built to be as lightweight as possible.

There is no way to make a runway safe if a plane lands halfway down it, even if the brakes and landing gear are actually working. It's just not possible; runways are limited by geography and we tend to run aircraft as heavy as possible.

[WalterBright]

I recall one from long ago where there was a fuel storage tank off the end of the runway. I don't think there were any survivors.