For Airplane Safety, Trying To Keep Birds From Planes 368
The Narrative Fallacy writes "Every year pilots in the US report more than 5,000 bird strikes, which cause at least $400 million in damage to commercial and military aircraft. Now safety hearings are beginning on the crash of US Airways Flight 1549, where a flock of eight-pound geese apparently brought down a plane, plunging it and 155 people into the frigid waters of the Hudson River. Despite having experimented with everything from electromagnetics to ultrasonic devices to scarecrows, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has yet to endorse a single solution that will keep birds out of the path of an oncoming aircraft." (More below.)
"The best bet right now is understanding bird behavior, although an intriguing old pilots' tale — that radar can scatter birds — may carry enough truth to ultimately offer a viable technical solution to a deadly problem. 'We need to find out, is that an urban legend or is there some truth to that?' says Robert L. Sumwalt, the vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. The Federal Aviation Administration already has an extensive program in place for 'wildlife hazard mitigation,' but it seems ill suited to the problem that faced the US Airways flight, which struck geese five miles from the runway — too far for the New York airports to take action — at an altitude of 2,900 feet — too high for radars being installed around the country to detect birds. 'There's no silver bullet,' says Richard Dolbeer, a wildlife biologist and expert on bird strikes. 'There's no magic chemical you can spray or sound you can project that is going to scare the birds away.'"
Re:Shoot them (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially since, from what I hear, areas around many airports have been essentially turned into wetlands.
(1) Flight 1549 was 5 miles from the airport at the time of the bird strike, meaning that they have to patrol a huge area (especially hard in the NYC metro area) to get rid of all the nesting sites there.
(2) The Canada (blame Canada!) geese that were ingested into the engine were just passing through the area on their migration route. So any sort of habitat destruction on the ground would have zero effect on them anyway. Good luck changing their migration routes too.
So, at least in this instance, there was basically nothing you could do about it except have trained pilots well-versed in emergency procedures. In fact, as a general matter, I think it's silly to invest in technology/training/whatever that solves an individual problem when you can invest in other measures that will accrue benefits across a wide variety of (perhaps unexpected) problems.
Inevitable, make sturdier planes... (Score:5, Insightful)
The planes velocity is too fast to move birds out of the flight path of planes. What needs to happen is make the planes capable of hitting a Canadian goose at 400 mph...
Re:Airbus (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a very well written post. Unfortinately that is not what happened. But good job bashing Airbus.
"Bird Strikes" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:why not kill two birds with one stone (Score:4, Insightful)
However the problem here is height, and the fact the aircraft might "mind" objects being in their flight path...
From what I can recall from a documentary I saw on this topic, different breeds of cats (wild cats) are allowed around some airports to hunt birds. I can't find any link relating to this though...
I did, however, manage to find at least one mention of "mock hunters", like this one [popupcity.net], which are flown around an airport to make real birds think that the place is full of predatory birds.
Re:A screen (Score:1, Insightful)
You just invented a cheese grater for birds.
Now, instead of a ten pound bird going into the intake, you have ten pounds of bird parts going into the engine.
Re:Turrets! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Warning signals (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe we should add a warning signal for the birds. Like a really loud noise.
How loud did you have in mind? Like loud as a jet engine maybe?
Re:Warning signals (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem is that birds learn. It's easy to make them run away from something, but if nothing bad happens to them, they'll eventually stop running and ignore it.
Also, jet engines already make a pretty loud and conspicuous noise.
Re:"Bird Strikes" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shoot them (Score:5, Insightful)
So, at least in this instance, there was basically nothing you could do about it except have trained pilots well-versed in emergency procedures.
I think the story is focused on changing the idea that there is basically nothing you can do.
The search for deterrent measures should not be limited to ground based systems.
We should not have to forever live with engine technology that can't handle that which occurs naturally in its normal operating environment.
We should not have to de-bird large areas just to handle air traffic.
The focus is to manage the problem so that it does not require every pilot execute emergency procedures on a daily basis.
Re:It's simple (Score:4, Insightful)
How about cow catchers?
I know that was supposed to be funny, but why not have a deflector that can be deployed in front of the engine For an instant, In an instant, and then retract.
Sure it blanks the engine, but it only needs to be there for a couple seconds.
This might be easier to do on tail-mounted engines, like 727's because the deflector (shaped like an air-brake) could deploy from the side of the aircraft.
But a pole protruding forward from the axis of engine could deploy near instantaneous deflectors
which retract just as quickly to bounce birds around the intake.
Re:Old problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I imagine being in the middle of the ocean rather than on land greatly reduces the number of birds nearby when carriers launch aircraft.
Life and Risk (Score:5, Insightful)
What strikes me most about a subject like this is what I see as a mass denial by many: life is inherently risky.
At some point there may be a method to keep birds away from aircraft. Or aircraft might operate such a different way that birds are not a threat to them. But that is not the point. Rather so many people seem to think that life should be totally risk free.
Re:Inevitable, make sturdier planes... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:USAF (Score:1, Insightful)
I'd hate to be killed by a duck that took my head off. Of all the stupid ways to die, that's towards the top of the list.
Re:A screen (Score:3, Insightful)
Heavy and impedes airflow when deployed
that projects about 1-2 feet in front of the air intake for the engine on take off and landing
Immensly strong support structure. 15 lb bird at 250mph is a LOT of force. And impedes the needed airflow into the engine.
and retracts at cruising altitude.
Heavy, complex retracting mechanism.
Decades of aero engineers have never, ever thought of such solutions, yet 3 minutes of
Amazing.
Re:Wetlands near airports (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you make it to complicated...
Airports simply need buffer zones around them for security, noise, etc. The problem is that many environmentalists are totally out of touch with reality; since they saw those areas as excellent locations for wildlife habitats, they pushed laws to that effect, on top of ones establishing buffer zones.
A shame, really...those people have generally quite likeable world view, but once in a while there's something like this... (other notable idiocies beeing anti-nuclear and wanting to turn all major rivers into concrete waterways for energy generation (well, tbh they don't realise that what they want would require turning rivers into concrete waterways...))