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For Airplane Safety, Trying To Keep Birds From Planes
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.'"
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.
Free Martian Whores!
Especially since, from what I hear, areas around many airports have been essentially turned into wetlands.
No wonder flocks of birds like the place...
One that hath name thou can not otter
We use falcons up here in Canada as well.
http://www.gtaa.com/en/news/torontopearson_today/details/7499a896-f358-436e-b3f4-f9fbc69bccb9
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
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.