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The Tech Behind Preventing Airplane Bird Strikes
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."
I read recently an article about how they actually use falcons at JFK to prevent bird strikes.
This seems to be about that, though I'm not sure if it was the article I saw: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/02/01/2009-02-01_untitled__falcon01m.html
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
Then you get birds stuck in the titanium chicken wire, and the engine has a good shot of now sucking in both the bird and the chicken wire. On top of that, even if that doesn't happen, you're still seriously impeding air flow into the engine which is needed to make the engine function.
And according to Wikipedia at least, a typical modern jet engine shunts dead bird parts through a bypass rather than through the engine.
I am officially gone from
Here at McChord, we've found the most effective methods involve a combination of ground cover control (eliminate food that the birds eat) and a 24 / 7 team of falcon handlers. But then, we don't have as much traffic as Sea-Tac...
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Actually there's a company that uses hawks to keep the area around airports clear of nuisance birds. The nice thing about hawks is they aren't blocked by fences so they can keep more than just the grounds of the airport clear.
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The bird strikes did not occur near the airport. They occurred 2 minutes after takeoff at an altitude of 3,000+ feet. The aircraft was miles from the airport when it lost power.
The techniques they use are valuable because they reduce the bird density right around the airfield, and having a multi-engine failure like what happened with 1549 had would be MUCH less survivable if it occurred immediately after takeoff.
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They already do. The problem is traffic management.
Airlines would love to save gas by going right up to the point where they can cut the engines to idle and then coast in to the airport. But since everyone wants to do that it would create a traffic nightmare. They need a way to line everyone up on the same runway so they can space them out properly. And if it's cloudy, you need a way to make sure you can be lined up on your runway when you come out of the clouds. So they make instrument approaches that use navigation aids on the ground or GPS.
This works well at small airports, but busy ones have too many planes coming in so they make these things called a Standard Terminal Arrival Route (STAR). Everyone flies to one of these routes and then they join up to an instrument approach to land.
Airlines would love nothing more than to save gas by doing exactly what you suggest, and people on the ground would also like to not have airplanes buzzing their house at all hours of the day, but it's not even close to practicable.
Bird bones are not the concern; they're hollow, lightweight, and brittle. It's the weighty mass of muscle that causes the damage.
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