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A wing strike or tail strike can be catastrophic for an airliner. Why not fit small rubber wheels to the underside of wing tips (I'm sure I've seen similar wheels fitted to the tail tip of some aircraft) so that, should the plane's wing strike the runway, this wheel connects harmlessly with the tarmac. The risk of the whole aircraft being sent into a fatal rollover is reduced as is the risk of fire from friction sparks. Or perhaps a spherical roller ball so that it is just as effective when the plane experiences a wing strike at an unorthodox angle. When performing a "crab" landing in strong crosswind for instance.
Whataloadof, Nov 05 2008
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This really wouldn't help. If a wingtip just scrapes the ground, it won't send the airplane into a spin. To spin the plane enough to cause a crash, the wingtip would have to plow into the ground pretty hard. This will result in a crash even if there is a wheel. You might think that a wheel would be less likely to dig in and catch, but the flat bottom of a wingtip will skid on a runway very well. The reason some airplanes (like the U2 spyplane) have wheels on their wingtips is to prevent damaging the wingtips when they scrape the ground, which happens routinely. (U2's have very long floppy wings.) Airliners almost never scrape the ground with their wings, so it isn't really an issue.
Sparks at the wingtip are unlikely to start a fire because there is nothing to catch on fire way out at the wingtip.