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.'"
I know one person that can do it (Score:5, Funny)
Dick Cheney will shoot them all in the face. :)
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Now if we needed a plane full of RIAA lawyers dealt with he's the man to send in
Close, very close. The plan is to fly a plane full of lawyers in formation in front of civilian passengers to take out the birds. I'd almost say, like a human shield, however, the lead plane is full of lawyers...
Re:I know one person that can do it (Score:4, Funny)
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Oh god, now I'll have nightmares tonight
Birds are smart (Score:5, Funny)
Most people don't realize this, but birds are very smart. They learn very quickly after getting hit by an airplane or being sucked into an engine, they NEVER do it a second time. People are usually not that smart, but birds learn quickly.
-Charlie
Props. (Score:2)
Just go back to Prop driven aircraft. The props will take care of the.
Actually I fear that sort of just killing every bird that refuses to leave the area around the airport that there isn't a total solution.
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.
Sharks (Score:2, Funny)
With lasers on their heads.
Best. Plan. Ever.
Cost factor (Score:5, Funny)
"What'd ya do today, Jake?"
"Shot at pigeons."
"Really? I thought the range was only open on weekends."
"Not them pigeons. I got me a job with the airport. I'm shootin' real pigeons, plus geese and anything else with wings. I just wish that darn airport were closer to Sesame Street. I've always hated that Big Bird..."
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Turrets! (Score:5, Funny)
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I wouldn't want a window seat if one of those birds gets through and hits the turret, bending it towards the window.
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Goose is sappin' mah sentry!
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Fly Around Them (Score:3, Funny)
Are flocks too small to pick up on the plane's radar? If not, fly around them.
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"fly around them"
Why not fly with them? If you cant beat them, then join them :)
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The speed of sound changes with pressure and temperature, unless you consider cruising altitude sea level. The speed of sound at FL35 is 660 mph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound). 600 mph / 660 mph = 0.909. 660 mph * 0.78 = 514.8 mph (closer to 500 mph than 600 mph as I claimed). Happy now?
I was trained in aerospace engineering, not English, although in this case I blame dyslexia :P.
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Yeah, it turns out meat doesn't show up on radar very well.
Clearly we need robot birds.
Scarecrows (Score:5, Funny)
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]
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(note: I double-posted this link in this thread, I know... But I didn't see this comment until I submitted the previous one. Have mercy! Don't mod me redundant!)
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Here in Brazil, they are training falcons to scare birds away from airport zones.
So the solution to the bird problem is... more birds?
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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...
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Warning signals (Score:2)
Re:Warning signals (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe we should add a warning signal for the birds. Like a really loud noise.
They tried that with the concord but it didn't work, so they gave up on the idea.
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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.
duh (Score:3, Funny)
"The best bet right now is understanding bird behavior, although an intriguing old pilots' tale â" that radar can scatter birds â" 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?'
Isn't that what the mythbusters are for? c'mon guys.
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A screen (Score:2)
Why can't aircraft engine manufacturers retrofit engines with a sturdy 2 inch mesh screen over the air intakes of their engines? That would keep birds from being sucked into the intake manifolds.
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I would be more concerned about the exposed
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Now, instead of a ten pound bird going into the intake, you have ten pounds of bird parts going into the engine.
What do you think happens to birds that hit the fan blades?
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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
Old problem (Score:2)
I believe this first started to be recognized as a significant hazard after WW II on Pacific island air bases. Gooney birds would nest near runways and impact aircraft. An impact with a B-29 wasn't that big a deal and did not affect the engines. Impact with a much faster jet aircraft was a problem and with fighter planes could easily bring down the aircraft.
I recall reading about this a long, long time ago. They tried everything they could to discourage the birds from nesting by the runways. Loudspeake
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I imagine being in the middle of the ocean rather than on land greatly reduces the number of birds nearby when carriers launch aircraft.
..with friggin laser beams on their heads. (Score:2)
How about birds with friggin laser beams on their heads.. or a friggin laser beam on the head of the plane?
Some things to think about (Score:2)
Planes have far less maneuverability than the birds.
Radar isn't that good on a couple pounds of flesh, so detection range is limited right now.
Even if the radar on the planes was improved to easily detect birds, the range would still have effective limits because birds move and change course.
By the time the birds detect the plane, they don't have much of a chance to avoid it.
There is a whole lot of sky to cover, the only feasible method is to cover controlled areas
Keep Birds Away from Planes (Score:5, Funny)
I quite agree with the FAA here. They should never have let women qualify to become pilots in the first place...
Oh wait...ah, I see... never mind...
Let natural selection do it (Score:2)
Natural selection will take care of it eventually.
Just keep murdering birds with airplanes until all the ones that don't get out of the way of planes have been removed from the gene pool off.
Not a real quick fix, you understand, but probably incredibly effective!
And develop planes that are better suited to simply take a duck in the face at 150 knots. If as a result, the bird strike does no serious damage to the plane, then you can let my previous proposal work.
Natural predators (Score:4, Funny)
Cats (Score:5, Funny)
Birds hate cats, so simply mount a few dozen cats outside the plane near the engines. Don't forget to mount the cats with their feet pointed down, or the plane will flip when you try to land.
Chaff rounds packed with bird seed could also work, but the cats should be more cost effective.
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.
Shield (Score:3, Funny)
Why not stick a shield in front of the engine?
No, not a disc, but a grid of thin spikes (parallel to the plane), ahead of the engine.
Everyone bitches about not being able to dodge the birds because the plane moves straight and can't turn quickly.
Use that to your advantage. Put a little frame of thin metal poles far enough ahead of the engine that it doesn't block the airflow. If a bird is on a collision course with the engine, it'll hit the spikes and get stuck. Make the spiked long enough to stack several birds. If it breaks, it breaks. You survived a bird attack, and that spiked grid will just fall to earth and hopefully impale some people.
Re:Shoot them (Score:4, Funny)
I knew those sidewinder missiles I purchased for my Boeing 747 were going to come in handy.
Re:Shoot them (Score:5, Funny)
By 'them', do you mean the planes or the birds?
-Charlie
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Re:Shoot them (Score:5, Funny)
I like to think outside of the box though, I say arm the birds.
Good God, man. Have you already forgotten the lessons of Hitchcock? Tippi Hedren barely made it through when those feathery sons of bitches were engaging in hand-to-ha... er... hand-to-wing combat. Arm them and we're all doomed!
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...
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.
Re:Shoot them (Score:5, Funny)
(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, these geese were illegal immigrants, crossing our sovereign national border without permission, invitation, or documentation, stealing food from decent hard-working American duck flocks, fouling American land and water with their unregulated duckish emissions, and ultimately causing mayhem and near-total disaster on American transportation systems.
We definitely need a better security fence. I hope our Homeland Security Department jumps on this.
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Re:Shoot them (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, a fence in the sky.
I for a long time said that Canada need to follow the example of their US brethren and build a fence on their southern border to prevent the undesirables from moving north.
Re:Shoot them (Score:5, Informative)
I wasn't talking about 1549, just general idiocy of establishing "Federally protected wetlands" in drainage basins for the airfield itself, for example.
Like in case of Detroit Metro Airport's runway 9R-27L, almost directly across Middlebelt Rd. from a 650m x 415m wetland/flood basin. Notice all the vegetation.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Detroit+Metro+Airport+runway+9R-27L&sll=37.579413,-95.712891&sspn=33.830346,56.162109&ie=UTF8&cd=1&ll=42.202423,-83.326921&spn=0.015546,0.027423&t=k&z=15 [google.com]
Scroll north to see more wetlands. Quoting one buddy: Catch a pic at the right time of day, to be determined by the frickin' birds, and there's hundreds/thousands of waterfowl on that thing or browsing the surrounding fields...some of which are directly under the flight path.
This is the same airport that claims it has no deer within the fence, so therefore no danger of deer on the runway, but drive by the sound abatement berms on the south end early some morning and you'll see herds of them at the edge of the woods. There's a 12+ foot fence the airport managers say keeps 'em out, but no one bothered to tell the deer that.
Or look at main Cyprus airfield
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=34.879876,33.620825&spn=0.050133,0.061197&t=h&z=14 [google.com]
just to the north-west was a large salt lake and all around were about half-a-dozen smaller salt lakes. These mostly dry up in summer (except for a couple of small ones) but are in various degrees of wetness during the winter, when they are the predilected home for thousands of wading birds, from the size of a moorhen up to swans and flamingos. They are also internationally recognised and protected nature reserves. It is a common sight in winter to see flocks of hundreds of flamingos transiting between the lakes, right across the flight paths of the aircraft and they aren't the size of a sparrow, either. Aircraft are often sitting on the end of the runway waiting for clearance for takeoff while "hostile" birds bugger off. Bird strikes are common in winter with perhaps 2 or 3/year requiring aircraft to return after takeoff either because of engine failure (rare), Pitot tubes spearing birds, cockpit glass cracked, control surfaces damaged, flaps unable to close etc. So far, no major accidents have occurred but it is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
The white areas are dried salt lakes and the greenish-grey and blue-green areas are wet ones. As you can see, the runway has lakes a few metres from it, on either side!
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.
Devil's Advocate (Score:3, Interesting)
Wetlands near airports (Score:2)
This is very true: consider this [google.com]: Cessna has this big ponds just south of Wichita Midcontinent Airport. Needless to say there are a BUNCH of Canadian Geese there, RIGHT IN THE FLIGHTPATH OF THE AIRPORT. In fact, given the prevailing winds, most take-offs are to the south.
Heck, I hate even DRIVING past those ponds on K-42, due to the birds flying low over the road.
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.
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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 wa
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Hmm.. season open for uncle Jimbo ?
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimbo_Kern [wikipedia.org]
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I for one did not know before today that his last name was Kern and some other details about uncle Jimbo but I forgot everybody else on /. knew absolutely everything about him.
Re:Shoot them (Score:4, Funny)
Paint the plane gray like a shark, attaching lasers that shoot the birds, with a giant cow catcher as a windshield, with a giant windmill attached to the top, and have a beowolf cluster of Dick Cheney's be the pilots for all of them.
Now there's a solid solution we can try, and 1 of them is bound to end in success.
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You have no idea how fast this comes up. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hopefully That Control System Won't Brunning Li (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Shoot them (Score:5, Informative)
I worked on an airport, years ago. At various places around the graded area, we had propane-powered noisemakers that would let off a gunshot-like sound every few minutes. Unfortunately, the birds became accustomed to the sound. The seagulls would still scatter, but only for half a minute. The ravens would merely flutter their feathers and continue doing what they were doing.
Other bird hazard tools included a starter pistol, a pickup truck (to scare them a little more directly), and a rifle.
Then again, this was a very small airport, so the more direct measures were only needed on the occasion that a plane was actually taking off or landing. And, of course, these measures would not have done anything for the Hudson incident, which happened far from the airport.
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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.
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Also, think of the economy: Can you imagine how many jobs (for snipers) this will create? It is a capital idea!
Re:Airbus (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a very well written post. Unfortinately that is not what happened. But good job bashing Airbus.
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Bull-fucking-shit.
Open up, troll... (Score:2)
here comes the airplane... vrrrrrrrrrrr http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/09/0035253 [slashdot.org] ...good boy!
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> a barrier around the engine inflow
That's the first thing that popped into my head. Big, diamond-grate cones over the front of the engines (a flat one would probably just get crammed in there with the bird when it hit).
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I am sure that Los Angeles has already had a sewage system implemented quite a long time ago.
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.
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Yup. I've never seen a bird fly under a power line.
Not.
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we're past that; we're looking for a more efficient use of stones. our original target was a 5:1 bird/stone ratio, but right now 3:1 is looking more feasible; at 2:1 you have to factor in the weight of a half-flock of rocks added to your cargo.
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at 2:1 you have to factor in the weight of a half-flock of rocks added to your cargo.
Obviously your stones are too big.
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In theory, if you have border collies chase them around when they're deciding if that's the place for them to build their summer nests, then they'll go elsewhere, and you'll be pretty much unbothered the rest of the summer. In practice, they'll come anyway to feed when that's the only place with green grass in the dry parts of summer.
But really, you're asking for a larger problem.
You have the geese.
Then you brin
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I was waiting for this. Bravo!
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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.
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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
Re:It's simple (Score:4, Informative)
I like your idea. The issues come into play when you start screwing around with air flow into the engine. I am not sure you could treat it like a turboprop engine. Turbo props use 100% of the air they intake for combustion or whatever bleed air takes their are whereas in a large turbo-fan bypass ratios are starting to hit 11 to 1 and over, interrupting air flow into the engine could give a drastic and very sudden reduction in thrust.
A lot of TurboProp engines use centrifugal rather then axial compressors or a combination of both making air intake much less critical.