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

Not that hard.

[RandoX]

We just need to build a fence to keep these Canadian terrorists out. Migrating, my ass.

Re:Not that hard.

[interkin3tic]

Dogs would be useful but it'd be a lot more fun if we could get a pterodactyl out there hunting the birds.

And then Mothra to hunt the pterodactyl to prevent THEM from getting sucked into engines, and then Godzilla to in turn keep mothras from taking down planes.

Re:Not that hard.

[Ogive17]

What about just building more wind powered generators. I've heard those are bad for migratory birds.

Clean energy and less birds.. guess you could say that's killing two birds with one stone?

*ducks* (or should I say geese?)

Ok, I'm leaving now.

Re:Not that hard.

[dr_dank]

Those puns were so fowl.

Re:Not that hard.

[afidel]

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.

Re:Not that hard.

[Cally]

Simpler than that; use Darwinian natural selection. Simply invent a machine the size and shape of a jet-aircraft which zooms around airports emitting loud jet turbine noises, and sucks in and shreds any bird not conditioned to keep well away from such stimuli. Rinse and repeat.

Re:Not that hard.

[smellsofbikes]

You joke, but this general problem has come up in the past.
Back in the old days when trains were the major form of transportation, there were snowblower engines called Elliot-Jull rotary snowplows that looked pretty much like the compressor sections of jet engines. The blades spun like mad and they cut paths through deep snow. Sometimes the snow would actually be 8 meters deep when they finally got a rotary to it, so they were just smashing into a wall of snow (literally: they'd put three or four engines behind one of these and get up a head of steam (the origin of the term) and smash into a snowfield.)
The problem was that often the railroad bed was sheltered, because they'd cut it through a hill, so a herd of cattle or deer would take cover in the shelter and get buried alive by the snowfall, and then the rotary would come through and run into them.

A flock of seagulls, or even canada geese, is nothing compared to 200 head of cattle, chopped into fragments and then frozen again when the rotary stalled on the debris. They'd have to tow it into the nearest shop and break out the blowtorches, and basically rebuild the entire front of the engine.

the secret?

[Anonymous Coward]

Always fly over rivers wide enough to land on!

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.

bird strikes

[Anonymous Coward]

The secret to preventing bird strikes is to constantly gauge their needs and demands. As long as you regularly meet those needs without giving in too much, you can keep them from striking.

Re:bird strikes

[interkin3tic]

I prefer to bully the bird union leaders, and threaten to hire bird scabs in the event of a strike.

Re:bird strikes

[StikyPad]

I think we need some sort of high-tech bird monitoring network, complete with identity cards for each bird, so we can find the bad actors. Naturally we'll want to monitor their communications, so we'll need blanket audio coverage of the entire US, as well as several hundred miles in all directions offshore. We must systematically capture and detain any birds that hang out near airports, and any birds they may have associated or mated with. We should also build fences, very large fences to keep out the birds that aren't here natively, who wish to cross our borders undetected. We must screen any potential migrating birds for poor waste hygiene, erratic flight patterns, or impure thoughts. We should root our their nests of evil, and as a bonus, we can eat their unborn babies, perhaps in an omelet or in some sort of fried rice dish, or we can use them to improve the consistency of our baked goods. One thing is for sure: when the birds strike again, and you can be sure they'll try, the next time it will be OUR fault if they succeed. We had the warning. We have it within our means to stop them. We perhaps lack only the resolve and the patriotism required. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America, land of the free from birds, and the home of The Bravados.

falconers

[qw0ntum]

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

Re:What about

[dkleinsc]

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.

Re:Another idea?

[wcrowe]

This idea was invented by Shampoo...

Falcons

[Frosty Piss]

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...

It was more than one bird

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The pilot of 1549 was saying his view was completely filled with birds and he ran into a whole flock of birds. All these techniques to buzz/fry one bird is not going to cut it. But the birds do have a motive in avoiding the plane as much as the plane wants to avoid hitting the bird. So if we just let the birds know a plane is on collision course they will move away. They are a lot more agile than an airliner.

Most birds use parallax to get their 3D cues. Think about it, for something that lives in full 3D space, most birds do not have stereoscopic vision. Their eyes are wide apart facing opposite directions with very little overlap. If the plane approaches the birds in such a way that the bearing (direction, angle) of the plane as seen by the bird is constant, the bird thinks the plane is part of the background, it is at infinity! That is why they don't take evasive action. If we put a series of LED lights along the length of the plane and turn them off and on to produce streaks of lights running from nose to tail, it will interrupt their visual cues and make the plane stand out from the background. That will give cues to the birds about the real position of the airplane. They will avoid us, we don't have to avoid them.

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...

Indiana Jones

[sobachatina]

Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky.

Not Often Tom Leher Lyrics Work in a post

[Greyfox]

I've gained notoriety
And caused much anxiety
In the Audobon Society
With my games...

They call it impiety
And lack of propriety
And boy.. a variety
Of unpleasant names

But it's not against any religion...
To want to dispose of... a pigeon...

Re:engine redesign?

[Volante3192]

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

Pointless

[PPH]

Great effort on the part of SeaTac to keep birds off the runway. But it wouldn't have made a damned bit of difference to Flight 1549. From what I've seen online (not quite the official FAA report, but probably close enough), the bird strikes occurred several miles from the runway at around 3000 ft altitude.

In the case of SeaTac, approach and departure altitudes like these are seen as far away from the airport as 20 miles. On a few occasions, I've been watching little Piper Cubs/Cessnas/whatever buzzing around over my house at 3 to 5000 ft altitudes and seen a 747 fly in on approach to SeaTac underneath them. And I'm more than 20 miles from the airport. Its not likely that the FAA can keep the air clear of Canadian geese, bald eagles and other such birds over an area of more than 1200 square miles.

The only solution to preventing another 1549 incident is to keep commercial aircraft at higher altitudes for as long as possible.

Re:Pointless

[fructose]

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.

Better idea.

[jellomizer]

We know birds hate Snakes.

Lets put Snakes on the planes. That way birds will avoid the plains to avoid the snakes.

I got that idea from a movie, I forgot what it was called.

It wasn't a bird strike

[knappe duivel]

It was a plane strike. Birds have feelings too, you insensitive clods!

Now unemployed

[DoofusOfDeath]

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

Re:Now unemployed

[c6gunner]

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

You'd have a lot of dead pilots?

Major point they're missing

[Guysmiley777]

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.

Re:Take a cue from office buildings

[Chris Burke]

The problem there is that most modern jet craft move faster than your average office building.

Oh sure, on average.

Re:What about

[MobyDisk]

If birds are so tough, how come we don't just make the whole plane out of birds?

Re:What about

[LackThereof]

Bird bones are not the concern; they're hollow, lightweight, and brittle. It's the weighty mass of muscle that causes the damage.