Meanwhile, within the pilot community, there's been a lot of smirking and nervous laughter. "Southwest had this coming," voiced a crewman with a competing airline, asking that his name not be revealed. He was referring to a widespread perception among pilots of a certain cowboy culture at Southwest -- an airline where the standing order is to get things done as quickly, efficiently and effortlessly as possible. The carrier's legacy of success is partly built on an uncanny ability to land, disgorge passengers, reboard and depart again, often in half an hour or less. Were the pilots of flight 1248 in a rush? Did they neglect something important?

It doesn't seem that way. And the boy's death at Midway marks the first fatality in Southwest's 38-year history. I'll point out, however, that with respect to unusually short runways, some airlines mandate a go-around if a plane is not down within 2,000 feet after crossing the threshold. Southwest's point of touchdown was at exactly 2,000 feet -- in heavy snow, with a tailwind. Taken separately, none of these things is particularly hazardous. Taken together, they leave little margin for error.

That aside, no smoking-gun procedural errors can be gleaned from the early NTSB findings. Assuming the involved parties are speaking the truth, it appears that all decisions were made to the letter of the law. Where to look next? Perhaps the weather reports -- wind speeds, snow depths or braking reports -- were inaccurate. Perhaps the crew and dispatch team entered faulty data into their computers. We'll eventually learn, but for now -- and maybe for good -- this is one of those strange and frustrating cases where the sum of an accident's parts does not equal the whole.

And if you're having that sense of déjà vu, so am I. It was only this past summer when an Air France Airbus A340 skipped off a runway in Toronto. Nobody was killed, but the wide-body jet crashed and burned after landing too far down the runway in stormy weather. "Air France 358 wasn't the first plane to go barreling off a runway," I wrote, "and might not be the last."

In a lot of ways these were very different incidents, but one of the issues they've again raised is the matter of crushable stopway barriers -- or lack thereof -- at many commercial airports. Neither Midway nor Toronto-Pearson are equipped with them. The barriers were discussed in Part 2 of my coverage of the Air France debacle.

With these and other occurrences in mind, it's interesting how the focus of blame is beginning to shift from airline (and pilot) to airport. Here at my hometown airport, Boston's Logan International, the field's complex, somewhat convoluted layout has been taking the heat after a series of recent snafus, including a near collision last summer between an Aer Lingus A330 and a US Airways 737. As for Midway, I've fielded several letters bringing up the airport's allegedly "notorious" reputation.

No airport is "notorious" in any legitimate sense, but it is true that Midway is a small, hemmed-in field designed for an age when the biggest and fastest aircraft were Convair propliners and DC-6s. But it's also true that newer planes have much more effective stopping power -- and in some cases shorter takeoff and landing runs -- than many of their predecessors. Hundreds of thousands of jets arrive and depart safely every year at Midway, as they have for decades.

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Speaking of Logan International, a day after the Southwest affair at Midway, as a near blizzard swirled through New England, a Comair regional jet was struck by lightning on approach into Boston. Already wound up and primed with disturbing aviation stories, from the errant 737 to the shooting at Miami International, local media took the lightning story and ran with it. News of the strike made both local papers and most of the news channels.

"But I would think," wrote an e-mailer later that evening, "planes are hit by lightning more often."

On average, a large jetliner is hit about once every three years. Regional aircraft, plying lower altitudes where there's a greater propensity for strikes, are hit about once a year. Putting that another way: Approximately 26,000 commercial jetliners and turboprops are flying around the world. Assuming a given plane is struck once biannually, more than 35 planes suffer lightning strikes every day.

Seeing how there have been only one or two lightning-caused crashes in the past 45 years, it's pretty obvious that airplanes are constructed with the phenomenon in mind.

Aluminum is very good at helping a plane dissipate and shed lightning's energy, which can top 300,000 amps. Composite components, used with increasing frequency on newer aircraft, are not as effective. The carbon-fiber wingtips of some regional planes, for instance, like those of the popular, Canadian-built CRJ, are especially prone to damage. To wit, the Comair incident at Logan involved a CRJ, and a wingtip was reportedly splintered.

This might present problems for upcoming designs like Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, to be constructed almost wholly of composites. One solution under study is to mix metal particles into those composite parts most likely to be hit. Generally that means an airplane's extremities -- like nose cones, winglets and portions of the empennage.

Back when I was actively flying, I managed to rack up three or four strikes in the course of my abbreviated noncareer. Damage, if any, was minor and superficial.

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