Vampire bites the runway...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-birming...p-as-plane-takes-off

Reminds me of a similar incident my company experienced back in 1992. -Thats what happens when you let " Paddy " do a cash in hand job !

Scroll to the end of the Doc to see the pics

John - Thanks for posting that one, big question is does anyone know where he landed since there was
damage to both ends of the runway.
Possible diverted to Birmingham International.
Someone will have some awkward questions to answer particularly after the changes to the rules
following​ the Shoreham incident, both aircraft being of similar vintage.
Colin

kevinross wrote: Thats what happens when you let " Paddy " do a cash in hand job !

That's some brilliant tarmacing O'Reilly! Obviously the organisers had not considered the state of the runway. For someone there is gonna be hell to pay.....

Reminds me of my time at Biggin Hill when the Vulcan did the High Alpha take off and did something similar to the runway at Biggin but luckily not quite as bad as we had to repair it during the display to allow him to land back on.

The problem is caused when Slurry Seal is used to temporarily extend the life of a runway (usually only done at local authority airfields (as the highways engineer was usually in charge of maintenance and the technique is used on roads) but the volatiles in the slurry seal dry out over only a few years and the bond with the lower surface breaks down allowing any cracks to get the jet blast under the thin layer and lift it off. When I arrived at Biggin Hill it had been given 4 x slurry seals, one on top of the other, over the preceding 12 years (London Borough of Bromley , the owners, were known as the 'leanest, meanest, and greenest' local authority in the country) every time a largish corporate jet like a Gulfstream IV of HS 125 took off similar things happened there.

The standard practice if a slurry seal is used as an emergency hold over for more major maintenance to be achieved is to remove the slurry seal plus the top 20 - 50mm (called the wearing coarse) of the old runway surface before laying new Asphalt (base course and then wearing course). The big driver in decision making is the cost of course, for Biggin Hill a slurry seal could be done for a few £100k where as a full surface plane off and re asphalt would cost £10+m. The Gatwick Runway full resurface cost in excess of £20m when I oversaw that in the year 2000.

JRI, reminds me of your bobcat