Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Dick Cheney will shoot them all in the face. :)
I knew those sidewinder missiles I purchased for my Boeing 747 were going to come in handy.
I have a bad feeling about this...
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
By 'them', do you mean the planes or the birds?
-Charlie
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!
Regardless of how much money they can throw at a technical solution, nothing will be as cost effective as paying a bunch of guys in blaze orange vests to shoot at birds near the airports.
"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..."
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
C'mon, no one's mentioned automatic turrets above every engine? I would pay money to have a window seat if turrets were installed...
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.
How about two giant aerodynamic scarecrows on each wing?
Seeing how it's almost time to leave work, and I've got about 5 minutes to burn, let me summarize all the comments/ideas into 1.
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.
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...
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.
That is a very well written post. Unfortinately that is not what happened. But good job bashing Airbus.
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
(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.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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
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
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!
One that hath name thou can not otter
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...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
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.
Any animal that pisses off golfers is a species that ought to be treasured and protected.
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.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
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!