3124: Grounded

Grounded

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Title text: We should have you at the gate in just under two hours--two and a half if we get pulled over.

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Explanation

In certain situations, such as extreme weather, airplanes may be "grounded", meaning that they are not permitted to fly, and scheduled flights have to be delayed or cancelled. This is often frustrating for passengers, especially if the airplane has already been loaded and is otherwise ready to fly. In this strip, a pilot in such a situation reports that they "have an idea", involving bridge clearance and top taxiing speed. "Taxiing" refers to the movement of airplanes while on the ground, such as when they're moving to and from their gate, and getting into position on the runway. The implication is they've given up on taking off, and are considering moving the entire airplane to their destination by ground, or possibly driving to an area with more suitable weather.

The joke is that such a plan would be ludicrous. There are situations in which flights between relatively nearby airports are delayed for long enough that driving between them would be faster, but airplanes were clearly never intended to travel significant distances by ground. Putting aside the fact that neither the engines nor the wheels were ever designed for long-term ground travel, it would likely be impossible. This comic was published during a storm which affected a significant part of the Northeast United States. This storm caused many flights to be heavily delayed or cancelled, which may be the inspiration for this comic.

The reference to "bridge clearance" suggests that the airplane could fit under all the bridges they'd need to pass during their trip, but that doesn't consider the aircraft's wingspan, which would be unlikely to fit on all the roads they'd need to use. At the very least, it would block multiple lanes of traffic (likely in both directions) for the entire trip and, since jetliners usually don't taxi faster than 25-35 mph, even a relatively short trip would block roads for a significant amount of time. Moreover, it's generally illegal for any vehicle to travel on public roads unless it meets specific standards (which an aircraft almost certainly wouldn't) and is properly licensed and registered (which an aircraft wouldn't be). Long delays in air travel may lead to people fantasizing about this kind of extreme solution, but it clearly wouldn't be feasible in real life.

The title text intensifies the humor, saying that driving will probably result in a traffic enforcement stop, and further extend the travel time. The "drive time" would probably be extended by more than the 30 minutes they have estimated, especially if the flight crew is required to stop, or disembark from the aircraft, or they could be entirely prevented from continuing onward.

Feasibility

A number of factors contribute to the feasibility of switching to driving:

• If the plane continues to wait, it may need to do so for several hours.
• Allowing passengers to leave a sealed plane is typically a long process and may (depending on the situation and airport) involve the cancellation of the flight (which airlines are financially incentivized to avoid) or the plane losing its place in the increasingly long line of flights waiting to depart.
• Passengers often have checked luggage that takes a long time to unload and be delivered (a notoriously slow process).
• When a full flight's worth of passengers suddenly need ground transportation to the same place, there is sometimes not enough ground transportation readily available to transport them and their luggage.
• Passengers arriving at another airport via ground transportation and wishing to board a connecting flight would need to pass through security checkpoints and hand over their luggage again, further delaying the process.
• Driving will probably require navigating through a maze of planes and cars

The plane appears to have 14 passenger windows on one side, a moderate number associated with a narrow-body / single-aisle commercial aircraft (likely with 4 seats per row - seating around 56 passengers and around 4 crew). A plane of this size is more likely to fit on a wide road or under any overpass built for large trucks, compared to a large airliner with possibly hundreds of passengers. Smaller planes are also more commonly used for local flights with fewer passengers. It is possible that the destination is only 70 miles away by road (likely a nearby city of at least moderate size or else the plane would be smaller). Roads around airports are often crowded, but the poor weather may have reduced traffic to and from the airport, or the pilots may be counting on smaller vehicles staying out of their way. If the public roads are viable and local law enforcement does not interfere (or allows the plane to proceed due to jurisdictional confusion), then the largest practical obstacles may be exiting the first airport and entering the second. Large airports restrict access to the tarmac, and since the pilots intend to respect air traffic control's decision to prohibit flight, they would either need several people on the ground to open major gates, or would need to ram at least one sufficiently weak gate or fence at each end.

It is possible that this comic is depicting a heavily simplified Embraer E-170, which has 19 windows on each side.

Transcript

[A plane is at an airport gate, connected to the jet bridge going into an extensive building with many dark windows facing out towards the plane. There are several other ground vehicles nearby, one towing two empty wagons for luggage, and related equipment that includes several small traffic cones placed strategically around the plane. In the space behind the plane there is another, unoccupied, gate with a jet bridge extending from the building.]

[A voice emanates from the plane, with a speech line starting at a star burst on top of the plane's cabin. The dialogue makes it clear that this is the captain speaking through the internal public address system:]

Captain's voice: This is your captain speaking. As you've probably noticed, we're still grounded due to weather

Captain's voice: But the first officer and I have been looking at bridge clearance maps and our top taxiing speed, and we have an idea.

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Discussion

I don't get the joke at all 2601:646:9d00:4bb8:39c8:4f9d:f1c0:978f (talk) 20:49, 4 August 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The idea is to simply drive the plane on the ground to the destination. 129.2.89.185 (talk) 21:02, 4 August 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Ok, should we mention this is because they mention the taxing speed 2601:646:9d00:4bb8:39c8:4f9d:f1c0:978f (talk) 21:11, 4 August 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Taxiing speed, not taxing speed. The pilots are not mulling how quickly they can file their 1040s. 136.226.19.75 21:23, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Even if a plane could taxi at around 60 MPH (car highway speed), 2 hours is only 120 miles. Not many flights on commercial jets are so short. Barmar (talk) 21:37, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

You are presuming they will stay on the ground. Once clear of storms, they could (theoretically, if not legally) take off and land at the original desired airport. SDSpivey (talk) 23:55, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Also presuming they have any intention of respecting the speed limit. They seem ready and willing to get pulled over, so assuming they don't care about speeding tickets, the V1 (last point at which a takeoff can be safely aborted) speed of the Embraer E-170 is 145 knots (167mph, 269kph) giving a much more useful 334 miles in 2 hours. Assuming sufficiently clear major highways, of course.

I would hope that Randall was aware of John Finnemore's radio sitcom "Cabin Pressure", as a very compatible sense of intelligent humour (with the 'u', 'cos British!). Though maybe not ('cos British radio, might be too fringe a taste), and so the fact that one of the episodes has a somewhat similar plotpoint to it (not saying which, and how, as anyone who'd like to start listening might just appreciate not knowing "this is the one where..." before it happens) probably isn't worth fully analysing (with an 's', 'cos British! :p ) in the explanation. But just mentioning it here, in passing, given that it reminds me of it.
...also, as well as bridge heights, I hope they have a good idea about carriageway widths, for the undercarriage, and road furniture (like lampposts/roadsigns, and telegraph/powerline poles) plus structures (buildings, and bridge-spans, and even groundworks like cuttings through an overlying grade) , for the wings. Though maybe a flight(/taxi) between two places in a relatively undeveloped landscape, having just wide surfaced roads and nothing more immediately prominent than relatively sliceable giant saguaro cactii. Which I can imagine (for the sake of the joke) in the US, but would probably rule out absolutely every possible road route here in the Uk, for any aircraft bigger than a microlight. (Or an autogyro, with the rotors tied front/back, or doing a Mad Max 2 because of prior damage, but that was also in feature-sparse desert...) 82.132.244.251 22:22, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the episode of Cabin Pressure involved taxing an aircraft down a desert road in the Sahara, so very few obstructions to worry about. Definitely very few, if any, roads it would work in the UK. 2A01:4B00:BB19:1900:5850:2A83:2F71:20F0 09:09, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

That was two separate things. The circumspect non-spoilery reference to the comedy, then looking at more realism-based situation. (I'd be more worried about wheels dropping off the edge of the road surface, into the sand, anyway. But G-ERTI is a 16-seat "Lockheed McDonnell 312", so may not have a particularly wide airframe and thus undercarriage wheelbase.) 82.132.244.198 05:22, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

American Airlines is already making their flights from Chicago O'Hare and Philadelphia do this! On busses. Yes, busses at the airport boarding gates. They're calling it American Landline. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:48, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

KLM does this as well, with trains between Brussels (ZYR) and Antwerp (ZYR) and Schiphol Airport (AMS). However, it is a "normal" Eurostar (formerly Thalys) train journey on your flight ticket: you check in your luggage between the train and flight and you're mixed with "normal" train passengers. Annoyingly, you can not count this trip towards your Eurostar miles. There used to be a train service from Brussels Central to Zaventem Airport where you checked in at Brussels Central. IIVQ (talk) 07:24, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Antwerp is ZWE 😉 --Coconut Galaxy (talk) 09:33, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm reminded of Douglas Adams's comments on the l2th radio episode of HHGttG, about how delays in getting a flight off the ground (for reasons that were almost entirely pointless) made it slower than making the trip by train would have been, in addition to the plane travel being less comfortable and less convenient. BunsenH (talk) 23:01, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

All the more telling, seeing as the Late Great Douglas Adams later died of complications caused by deep vein thrombosis after a flight. 124.150.67.115 22:45, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Continuing on the ground is occasionally done when a flight is diverted to somewhere reasonably close (a few 100km). Of course, they don't take the plane, they get some buses or hand out some train tickets. --Coconut Galaxy (talk) 09:33, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Massachusetts RMV frowns at the idea of allowing anything bigger than a roller skate on Memorial Drive or Storrow Drive. Stuck trucks at the nine-foot zero inches MIT bridge (oops, HARVARD Bridge) are a regular feature of Boston driving. Airplane wouldn't fit through the Boston motorway tunnels, either. Randall will have to use alternate transport. Perhaps the airplane would fit inside a Tardis? 174.130.100.64 12:30, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Huh? This seems…not even wrong? The Mass RMV doesn't have jurisdiction over Memorial Drive or Storrow Drive. Both are DCR roadway, not MassDOT/MassHighway, but even if they were normal state or local roads, the Mass RMV wouldn't have authority? And it's…not even right?…because bicycles are not prohibited from Memorial Drive, although many people think it's pretty inadvisible (probably worse on Storrow, though). Maybe I'm misunderstanding, though, since obviously cars are bigger than rollerskates. So perhaps the intention was to comment on trucks and planes being disallowed. Still, there are Massachusetts airports that are not near these two DCR roadways that seem a much better fit for the desired transit. JohnHawkinson (talk) 15:07, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

Is this still an incomplete summary -- Mathmaster (talk) 23:37, 5 August 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Is this an incomplete answer? 82.13.184.33 15:56, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

I find the idea that this is Logan Airport a little presumptuous. Surely there are some airports in the Midwest where you could, theoretically, taxi from one to the other without encountering any major obstacles? --Coconut Galaxy (talk) 07:33, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

Having lived there, i can pretty confidently say that any airport in Nebraska can be taxied to any other. --DollarStoreBa'al^ConverseMy life choices 19:24, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

The whole bullet list under "motives and feasibility" seems very out of place, and the sentence preceding it is completely vacuous. I mean, "a number of factors contribute to the dilemma"? Which dilemma? There's no dilemma here, only a joke. And what dilemma does not have more than one contributing factor? This communicates nothing and just takes up space. The items in the bullet list itself just seem off topic; a comparison between on-plane and off-plane ground transport does not belong in a section titled "motives and feasibility". That belongs in a table, with rows for every aspect impacted by each choice and columns for every mode of transport. 2A02:A466:A997:0:74BA:2E0:D85C:CED1 17:36, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

Oh great... our first AI-generated explainxkcd. You knew it had to happen. Gbisaga (talk) 19:01, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Anonymous 2A02, the dilemma was whether to switch to regular ground travel or make a bizarre long-distance taxi. You are welcome to refine it further - I only had a short time to make up for the prior lack of curiosity about "why would anyone do this?" and "could it work?". Gbisaga, you insult my entirely manual effort, coincidentally close to the latest issue. --Magtei (talk) 08:06, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
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