In aviation, any article or substance, alien to an aircraft or system, which could potentially cause damage. Here talking about two type of objects Damage could happen:
Foreign Object Debris / Damage FOD
Definition: damage due to foreign bodies, not come from the aircraft itself.
FOD Examples :
- Bird strikes,
- Hail (can break windshields and damage or stop engines),
- ice, sandstorms, and ash-clouds (can clogging the air intakes).
- Objects left on the runway (i.e: solid garbage, Parts from ground vehicles, ground tools or equipment ).
- Tools left inside the aircraft after manufacturing or servicing.
- Tools or other items can get tangled in control cables, jam moving parts, short out electrical connections, or otherwise interfere with safe flight.
DOD Domestic Object Damage
Definition: damage by objects or Fragments thereof derived from the aircraft's own components.
DOD Examples :
- loose blade from the engine compressor or turbine.
- loose screw, nut or rivet.
- cockpit DOD is a situation where an item gets loose in the cockpit and jams or restricts the operation of the controls.
All aircraft may occasionally lose small parts during takeoff and landing. These parts remain on the runway and can cause damage to tires of other aircraft, hit the fuselage or windshield/canopy, or get sucked up into an engine. Although airport ground crews regularly clean up runways, the crash of "Air France Flight 4590" demonstrated that accidents can still occur: in that case, the crash was said to have been caused by debris left by a flight that had departed only four minutes earlier.
The aviation and airline industry is suffering from the PDA-Parts Departing from Aircraft - occurrences, things falling from aircraft may range in size from a single small rivet to the large fan cowl doors, all these parts are already do falling from aircraft, so airbus need to aware the aviation personnel about the already existing solutions to mitigate and decrease these occurrences, the responsibility will fall on the manufacturer like airbus and the operator or the airline itself, both need to cooperate to mitigate these PDA occurrences, pilots need to make a thorough walk around before departure, maintenance personnel also need to properly close all access panels before departure.