Scarecrow For Airplanes?
While we’re on the topic of airplanes and things related to airplanes, here is an interesting article from The New York Times about a safety board meeting regarding US Airways Flight 1549, which landed safely in the Hudson River earlier this year as a result of an unfortunate rendezvous with some Canada geese (a bird of considerable size). According to the article:
Airports already bulldoze bird nests and send dogs to chase off flocks, but engineers are trying new technologies to scare away birds in flight, including using landing lights as strobe lights, the vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday.
The official, Robert L. Sumwalt, spoke on the eve of Tuesday’s safety board hearing on the crash of US Airways Flight 1549, which took Canada geese into both engines shortly after takeoff from La Guardia Airport on Jan. 15 and glided into the Hudson. All 155 people on board survived.
Mr. Sumwalt said turning the landing lights into strobe lights could make a plane, closing in on the birds at more than 100 miles an hour, more conspicuous to them. But, he said, that is only one solution that should be investigated.
“Maybe there’s some other technology out there, a radar that some innovative company can come up with to zap the birds out of the way,” Mr. Sumwalt said in an interview. Some pilots believe that birds try to avoid emissions from the planes’ on-board weather radar, he said, and “we need to find out, is that an urban legend or is there some truth to that?”
“We need to be innovative when we’re looking for solutions here,” he said.
US Airways Flight 1549 had these monstrous birds fly into its engines.
Clearly, people have thought about solutions to flying aircraft near birds. As mentioned in the article, people already attempt to control the bird population near airports by destroying their nearby habitats. However, in the case of the Canada geese in US Airways Flight 1549, habitat destruction would not be practical because Canada geese are migratory in nature, which means they do not have a particular habitat to destroy (wildlife conservation advocates are probably shaking their heads in disgust at that).
Also according to the article, there are regulations in place for aircraft engine design that considers birds flying into them:
Another area to be covered in the three days of safety board hearings is how engine standards are set. There is a rule for how big a bird an engine must be able to take in and spit out while continuing to produce thrust, and another for the maximum size it must be able to take in without breaking up and throwing off dangerous shrapnel. The hearings will look into whether engines can be built to withstand birds as big as the Canada goose. Mr. Sumwalt said the answer was probably not.
If only there was a non-destructive solution to birds disrupting aircraft (such as a scarecrow for all types of birds) …
(Image from Wikipedia)
“US Airways Flight 1549 had these monstrous birds fly into its engines.”
LOL