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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.'"
Dick Cheney will shoot them all in the face. :)
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.
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.
(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.
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.
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!