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."

Comments

Re:What about

[John Hasler]

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?

[Volante3192]

If you were an engineer you'd realize it wasn't that easy...

Re:It was more than one bird

[flyingfsck]

There is the little matter of the difference in speed between the plane and the bird too...

Now unemployed

[DoofusOfDeath]

Maybe if we just posted Cheney at the end of the runway with a shotgun...

Re:What about

[Country_hacker]

Hang on if I'm understanding what everyone is saying. We're going to take hundreds of tons of metal, people, and highly flammable liquid, hurl them into the air at high speeds, not just once but thousands of times per day all over the country, and not expect shit to happen?

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.