One of the problems with airliners with low-slung engines is that they are vulnerable to picking up trash when taxiing or on the runway.
Today’s invention extracts some benefit from this.
Imagine a bank of jet engines which have been withdrawn from flight service mounted on a vehicle with their intakes pointed towards the tarmac.
The engines have their intakes behind a strong mesh screen, which can be slid away for cleaning, when stones, rubbish or stray metalwork have been collected.
The vehicle, which could be made autonomous, drives around an airport cleaning all the flat areas where planes go.
A smaller version of this would be useful for the flight decks of aircraft carriers.
These jet engines may need to be rotated out and repaired, but they would not be subject to any flight regulations and could therefore be operated relatively cheaply.
