The Tech Behind Preventing Airplane Bird Strikes 242
the4thdimension writes "CNN is running an article covering the technology used at Sea-Tac for preventing airplane bird strikes, like the one that occurred weeks ago to the now famous Flight 1549. The hardware used ranges from low-tech pyrotechnics, to netting, to lasers, to avian radar. Using a combination of all these technologies, Sea-Tac believes they save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in avoiding dangerous bird strikes."
Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you'll get bird plus titanium wire in the engine instead of just bird.
There just isn't a material strong enough. Any structure that would reliably keep the birds out would be unaccepetably heavy and would restrict air flow.
Re:engine redesign? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you were an engineer you'd realize it wasn't that easy...
Re:It was more than one bird (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It was more than one bird (Score:3, Insightful)
innovative thought!
but how you gonna test it?
what about audio? (Score:2, Insightful)
What's the audio reception spectrum of birds? Can we add some sound that we do not hear and they hear?
Now unemployed (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if we just posted Cheney at the end of the runway with a shotgun...
Re:Not that hard. (Score:3, Insightful)
They also use hawks here, in Hungary, Eu.
The nice thing about hawks is that they don't strike.
Re:Take a cue from office buildings (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem there is that most modern jet craft move faster than your average office building.
Re:falconers (Score:3, Insightful)
but I can understand why they wouldn't be effective against geese.
Perhaps I'm being too simplistic, but I'd guess that falcons just don't hunt geese.
Re:Not that hard. (Score:1, Insightful)
You're one of those guys who thinks he has a sense of humor, right?
Re:What about (Score:3, Insightful)
No problem. Just be prepared to pay five times as much for your tickets.
Re:What about (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I understand we want to do everything in our power to make flight as safe as possible. But this is the first known incident of a dual flameout due to bird strikes in the history of commercial flight, right? I'd say in the 70-odd years we've been doing this, that's low enough to be acceptable risk.
Re:The IT Solution - More Redundancy (Score:1, Insightful)
It is more a case of how far apart the engines are...If you fly through a flock you may well take out all the engines no matter how many there are. I haven't heard of it happening with birds but there was a case where a 747 flew through an eruption cloud from a volcano and all the engines stopped. They had a long somewhat heart stopping glide until they managed to get enough engines going again to make it to the nearest runway.
Redundancy is not easy even in IT or telecommunications...after 40 years in the latter field I am prepared to say that there is always a way that a failure can occur, even if you can't figure out how it could beforehand.