MURFREESBORO, Tenn. – Several airplanes belonging to MTSU were pounded with golf ball-size hail and have been grounded until they are cleared for flight.
Wayne Dornan, who chairs the Middle Tennessee State University Department of Aerospace, told The Daily News Journal that flight controllers at the Murfreesboro Municipal Airport were monitoring the weather Tuesday and saw an approaching hailstorm.
They ordered the student pilots to land ahead of a hailstorm. No one was injured, but the school was left with only three planes in their training fleet. The 27 others were grounded indefinitely.
"Three is better than none," said Wayne Dornan, Chair of the Aerospace Department.
Dornan said they were still trying to assess the damage done to about 90 percent of university's fleet.
"I don't even want to think about how much this could cost," he said Friday.
The storm dumped golf ball sized hail. As the storm started approaching the Murfreesboro Municipal Airport, flight dispatchers used a new system, installed just three weeks ago, to get a handful of planes in the air to land in time.
The radar-like system was so new it was still in the testing phase. Dornan said before Tuesday's storm they had not even decided if they were going to purchase it, but now it could be a "done deal."
Had a storm with that type of hail and intensity popped-up just a month ago before they began testing the new system, Dornan said it could have killed everyone in the sky.
"A plane like this cannot fly that kind of a storm," he said, pointing to one of the school's Diamond aircraft.
The pilots made it on the ground minutes before the storm hit. A move, Dornan said, saved lives.
"It could have done some serious, serious damage and I don't particularly see a plane being able to make it through a hail storm of that intensity," he said.
The damage left behind was no bigger than your fingertip, but still university instructors were not taking any chances.
"If it was a car I don't think I would hesitate or worry about driving it anywhere, but this is an airplane and we don't know what this has done to the structural integrity of the wing," said Dornan.
Surprisingly, the damage was not the problem keeping instructors up at night. It was what could happen to flight students, like Alex McCloud, who have to earn precious flight hours.
"I think it's kind of natural to be a little nervous, but I think most of us are pretty confident that everything is going to be taken care of," said McCloud.
MTSU was hosting a handful of other universities for a regional flying competition. Planes from about five universities were at the airport when the storm hit.
MTSU has grounded its planes until manufacturers inspect them and make certain they are safe to fly.
Experts planned to check each plane before the university figures out if it needs to lease or borrow temporary ones until its entire fleet is fixed
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