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.'"
why not kill two birds with one stone (Score:1, Interesting)
USAF (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was stationed in Dover in the early '70s, a C-5A came in while I was working on the flightline with its windhield broken, a big bloody hole in it. It had hit a pretty large bird, IIRC a big duck, which decapitated the co-pilot. Bird strikes have been aviation's bane since there was such a thing as aviation.
Re:Shoot them (Score:4, Interesting)
Especially since, from what I hear, areas around many airports have been essentially turned into wetlands.
No wonder flocks of birds like the place...
Falcons (Score:2, Interesting)
Here in Brazil, they are training falcons to scare birds away from airport zones.
Re:Falcons (Score:5, Interesting)
We use falcons up here in Canada as well.
http://www.gtaa.com/en/news/torontopearson_today/details/7499a896-f358-436e-b3f4-f9fbc69bccb9 [gtaa.com]
Re:Sharks (Score:1, Interesting)
This still gets modded funny?? Is anyone else over the whole "sharks with lasers" thing?
Re:Airbus (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wetlands near airports (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a simple reason for this: no one wants to live next to the airport for some reason. So, the land becomes low-valued, and becomes a wetland. Or, they build the airport next to a wetland because it's cheap, and again because no one else wants to live next to it.
The simply solution is for the government to force airports to be built away from wetlands, near residential areas, and to force people to stay there and not move out or devalue the homes. I'm not sure how they'd do this, but I'm sure they can find a way. Perhaps surveil realtors and find people looking to buy in the area, and grab a few at random and force them to purchase a house near the airport at full price under threat of violence.
Or people could just accept that bird strikes are the price they pay for wanting air travel but not wanting to live near the airports.
Re:duh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Airbus (Score:2, Interesting)
So explain the recent Ryanair 737 that had bird-strike-induced flameouts the other month. That was already on landing approach, and whilst it landed moreorless on the runway, one MLG collapsed as it came in very hard. The airframe has now been written off.
How about a goose-whistle? (Score:2, Interesting)
-Oz
Re:It's simple (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
The compressor stalls (loud noise and flames coming out of the engine) would scare the bejeezus out of anyone near that engine. The fire goes out in a jet engine pretty quick when you take any of the three magical ingredients out of the recipe.
However, a better design does exist and it's not entirely far off from what you suggest. Turboprops of the PT-6 variety (the only type with which I'm familiar) are typically mounted (and operate) in such a way that an inertial separator could stave off engine shutdown due to ingestion of large amounts of foreign material. With the inertial separator deployed air flows around a corner of such a radius that something more massive (such as ice--thus the intent of the device) cannot make the turn and is ejected aft of engine. The drawback of such a device is that it causes power loss and a rise in operating temperature.
To do something like this with a large turbojet/fan engine would require a non-trivial amount of engineering to relocate intakes asymmetrically from the thrustline of the engine(s) thus allowing debris to be ejected without damaging the engine. Not a huge problem. It just adds slightly more complexity and expense and until we're encountering birds more than we encounter ice, things aren't likely to change.
Re:Shoot them (Score:3, Interesting)
My base does actually use the 12 gauge option, if the other measures work.
They've found that shooting a few birds for real renews the effectiveness of the pure sound shots.
Other options include making the airport not as attractive to birds as other areas outside the flight path. Then you hunt the other areas sufficiently that they don't fill up habitat wise, but not so much you scare the birds away - a brief but intense hunting season, basically.
Re:Shoot them (Score:1, Interesting)
Regarding point 2, the facts seem to be at variance with your statement;
A recent article shows you can, and in fact have changed migratory habits, in this case to none!
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906 [vanityfair.com]
"The agencies captured breeding pairs of an endangered but supersize subspecies known as the giant Canada goose, and by clipping their wings forced them to settle permanently into authorized nesting grounds along the Eastern Seaboard and elsewhere in the United States. The offspring of these clipped-wing geese imprinted to the new locations, and, having lost the collective memory of migration, became full-time resident populations.'
It seems they were not illegal immigrants!
migration routes (Score:1, Interesting)
I am by no means an expert on the matter of bird migration, but I seem to remember reading that the migration routes are not something FSM given but follow routes that are less dangerous or demanding on the birds or offer more resting places than other routes. So changing features on the ground should have some effects. Maybe not just destroy existing habitats but create new ones that move the birds further away from airport areas?
Devil's Advocate (Score:3, Interesting)