Q: What Do Airplanes and Leather Shoes Have in Common?

A: They can both be held together with duct tape.

This morning I flew from the Central Wisconsin Airport (CWA) to Chicago O’Hare (ORD) on United flight 7103. About halfway through my flight I looked out the window and saw something rather startling. A large piece of what appeared to be duct tape lay across the vertical tip of the right wing. The edges along the top and bottom of the strip of tape were smooth, while the left and right edges were jagged, as if the tape had been cut off a roll. (Just like with real duct tape.)

Even more startling than the duct tape on the wing of my plane was what I could see under it. Although my iPhone’s camera wasn’t able to capture this amount of detail, I could clearly see the indentation of a hole in the wing, under the tape. I’m going to venture a guess that the hole was one inch high and eight inches wide, but it was hard to tell for sure because of its distance from my window.

Wondering if my eyes were playing a trick on me, I asked the couple sitting in the row behind to look out the window and tell me if they noticed anything unusual on the wing of the plane. “Oh my god”, said the woman. “Is that duct tape?”

It was around this time that I looked down at my feet and was reminded of what was holding together my left shoe…

After the plane landed safely in Chicago, I talked to one of the pilots about the wing. He told me that sometimes food delivery trucks or other equipment will bump into airplanes and put holes in them. Until the damage is repaired with a permanent fix, it’s often patched up with “speed tape”, which is also known as “600 mph tape” because apparently that’s the maximum wind speed the tape can endure.

I did some googling, and despite the horrific appearance of an airplane being held together with duct tape, it’s apparently a common and safe practice. Here’s what I found:

• A YouTube clip of an airplane duct tape repair in India
• Speed Tape on Wikipedia
• A Speed Tape Repair Photo
• An Airplane Duct Tape Discussion on Airliners.net

So, the next time you’re on an airplane and see tape holding together the wing, don’t panic. (Unless the tape is scotch tape, in which case you should freak the hell out.)