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Birds—they think they own the skies. Ever since the Wright Brothers they've been vying for supremacy up there, landing their first fatal blow in 1912 by downing a plane into the surf off Long Beach, California. Yesterday's emergency landing in the Hudson River was just the latest chapter in an ongoing pitched battle between bird and plane. Of course, from the point of view of the Canada geese believed to have been consumed by both engines of U.S. Airways Airbus A320, yesterday's strike must have seemed a bit of a Pyrrhic victory (though there's probably a sweet flock of virgin geese greeting them in the afterlife, hey-oh).
Mary Cummings, an aviation professor at MIT, tells the Daily News that bird strikes have become more of a problem the last few years. Nearly 500 planes have been damaged by collisions with birds since 2000, the FAA says, causing an estimated $600 million a year in damage. According to the Times, the most recent incident took place at JKF in December 2006, when a great blue heron was swallowed by the engine of a Boeing 767 jet shortly after takeoff. (The plane returned to the airport with no injuries...besides the heron.)
At La Guardia, the last bird strike was in 2003, when an American Airlines Fokker (heh) 100 plane hit a flock of geese upon takeoff, causing the right engine to fail and diverting the flight to JFK. The News reports that Port Authority officials have been at odds with animal-rights activists for years over their efforts to thin the geese population on Rikers Island near La Guardia. (Activists want nonlethal methods for managing the population.) At JFK, they use falcons; here's a killer video.
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No shit sherlocks. I'm personally tired of this story. Must be a slow news friday.
What is it with these "save the geese"people? Geese and squirrels are not in jeopardy of being wiped out in the near future. I would rather see a thinning of these nuisance critters rather than thinning of the human population. There should be open season 365 days a year on both of them along with deer.
I have yet to read of any ideas as to how to prevent birds from reaching the blades of the engine. Might I suggest some sort of screen? Would that be too difficult to design?
Apparently the engines' voracious need for air doesn't make a screen viable although engines have been designed to some degree so that they can withstand one or two four pound birds getting pureed inside them.
Wouldn't work. The bird would still be drawn into the intake, and the fact that it would be pre-mangled by going through the screen wouldn't make a difference. Internal damage would still be as likely.
And of course as DanielJ said, a screen would have to massive to keep out a 4 or 8 pound object being hit at 200-300 mph or more. Even if that could be done, and somehow something could be devised to keep the carcass from entering the engine in pieces anyway, the force of impact would still be a problem.
Considering there's a huge bird sanctuary in Jamaica Bay (very nice place for a nature stroll btw) near JFK airport, I'm surprised there aren't more collisions.
@snoopydog, what do squirrels have to do with this incident? in regards to the human population thinning, it is not thinning at all but expanding as quickly as it is consuming.
There's no way to prevent the birds from reaching the engine- you'd need a screen the thickness of prison bars.
Didn't birds bring down John Denver's plane some years back? I seem to recall that.
Take me home, country geese.
Does anyone know if radar detects birds?
I think if the flock is large enough it will show up on radar.
Yes, but the problem remains that radar doesn't reveal at what altitude birds (or anything else) might be. Planes have transponders that broadcast that information so it will be known to controllers, but otherwise there's just a blip on the screen.
When something that might be a bird or flock is seen, controllers will request pilots watch for it and report the altitude if they see it. But if the takeoff path would put planes at, say, 500 feet over a particular spot and there might be birds that may be at 100 or 1,000 or 8,000 or anywhere else, that's all that can be done: an advisory that there may be birds in the area.
yeah let's kill some animals...that will help.
Human bullies will always find opportunities to go in a rampage just for the sake of stupidity.
That is a lovely picture.
Geese are terrorists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE8k1pHDB8Y
Canadian Geese are a nuisance!
They block jogging paths, they crap everywhere, they foul lakes and ponds killing the fish there, they drive away other non-nuisance bird species like ducks, and now they no longer migrate because they've gotten too fat by hanging around city and suburban parks. Those who seek to protect them are doing them a disservice and pissing off the rest of us.
the first paragraph of this article is brilliantly written.
Ditto. Kudos to JDS.
There is a huge dead bird right outside my window. I'm pretty sure there is a curse attached to to.
And here I thought only aviation dorks like me laughed at "Fokker".
Dem geese gotta pay for air rights like everybody else. If dey can't afford da rent, den dey're outta heeyah.