Aircraft carriers and flightlines go hand-in-hand.  The safety of both on-deck personnel and the pilots is of paramount importance and one of the key methods of debris clean-up on a flightline is with FOD Magnets and  Magnetic Brooms.

When a jet engine is idling, it is sucking in over 23,000 lbs of inbound “thrust”.  One small stray piece of “foreign object debris” or “F.O.D. metal ingested into the engine can be spit back out and kill an officer on deck.  This same stray piece of metal has the capacity to shut down a 5 million dollar engine as well as damage turbine blades.  Multiple daily FOD Walks along a flight deck using a magnetic broom  remove Metal from GROOVES and NICHES unreachable using any other FOD removal equipment/sweeping devices.  In addition, many of the on-deck service vehicles utilize the hanging style magnetic sweeper to continuously canvass for stray metal.  Between the FOD walks using a magnetic broom and the installation of a magnetic sweeper or “FOD Magnet”, the flightlines and flightdecks of our country’s aircraft carriers are kept as clear as possible of dangerous ferrous metal.