> they tried to take off instead of accelerate past the runway at ground level

Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for cases like this, and breaking failures following landings.

> Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for cases like this

Ha, Jeju Air Flight 2216 smashed into a barrier on the second landing attempt in Muan last year [0], and people commented "How could there be a barrier at the end of the runway, so obviously stupid, irresponsible", etc.

Now a plane does not smash into a barrier at the end of the runway and people suggest putting barriers at the end of the runway.

Don't mean to attack parent post, but may I suggest that

a) hordes of experts have thought long and hard about these issues, and it is unlikely that you can encounter this for the first time as a lay person and come up with a solution that has eluded the best engineers for decades ("why don't they attach a parachute to the plane?"), and

b) we are very close to an optimum in commercial aviation, and there are few if any unambiguous ("Pareto") improvements, but rather just tradeoffs. For example: You leave cockpit doors open, terrorists come in and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon. You lock the cockpit doors closed, and suicidal pilots lock out the rest of the crew and commandeer the plane to turn it into a weapon of mass-murder-suicide.

There are no easy answers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Air_Flight_2216

ETA: In 2007 an A320 overran a runway in Brazil and crashed into a gas station, killing 187 pax & crew + 12 on the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054

> Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next "important" thing.

Some do. Here is what it looks like when an overshooting plane utilizes such a barrier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW71FrX8t_g

179 dead.

Consider the possibility that gigantic flying aluminum tubes filled with tons of flammable fuel hurtling around at hundreds of kilometers per hour comprise a dilemma that has no trivial answers. Even defining what "important thing" means at any given instant is not straightforward.

Unless you have a berm several dozen meters high with a 100 meter base, you ain't stopping something like this from a physics standpoint unfortunately.

Many airports have this problem. The recent korean air disaster which echos this is another example. BTW, this is why most airports, if possible, point out to sea...

Some runways have been extended with ‘engineered materials’ surfaces, often a form of porous concrete into which an airliner’s wheels will sink, absorbing a lot of energy and arresting the airplane without causing it to break up. It is very effective for landing overruns, but I don’t know about last-seconds aborted takeoffs.

Security/debris fencing yes, but that's like, orders of magnitude short of what would stop the amount of energy we're talking about here.

You also don't particularly want it to be catastrophically effective as there are real world cases where planes have clipped the fence and then NOT gone on to crash, or at least to crash in a fairly controlled manner with the majority onboard surviving. Hitting a brick wall at 180mph is going to have a 0% survival rate.