From an airport point of view, the problem in this case is that the gulls were there, or, if that was unavoidable, that the crew was not warned.
It is NOT impossible to have a system of alerting crews, via ATC, of flocks that might affect a departing aircraft. It IS expensive because it requires people on the ground, in all operating hours in daylight. One day, radar may be good enough, but even that will not spot a flock on the ground which can fly up into the climb-out path after an aircraft is committed to take off.
As some posters have pointed out, loss of take-off power on both sides, or full loss on one side and partial on the other, is not regularly practised in the normal training cycle.
Unfortunately it is a matter of sheer luck, assisted perhaps by avoiding action if that is possible (unlikely), for a multiple bird strike to be on one side only. The probability, it seems to me, is that it will be on both sides if and when it happens.
At airports where there is a significant risk of multiple bird strikes in spite of all the active and passive control measures that are taken, which probably includes most within 10 miles of an estuary, large body of water, rubbish dump or coastline, there can and should be much, much better systems in place to monitor the presence of flocks, airborne or on the ground, within 500m (say) of the departure runway c/l from the start of roll for, say, 4,000m. (That's my very rough guess at the distance needed to gain enough height to (a) take proper recovery action) and (b) be above the usual maximum height at which birds are found.)
Crews can be warned via ATC of the presence of a flock, with the take-off clearance if necessary, and take the decision to delay rolling or go. (ATC sholuld apply no pressure at this point apart, maybe, from withholding the clearance in the first place.)
Rather than bewailing the fact that engines are vulnerable to multiple bird strikes, we should accept that they are (is a frozen chicken still the only test? Didn't a swarm of bees recently do some damage to an ancient B737-200?) and work on preventing multiple strikes. It is perfectly possible to do that, as long as airports have the will and the money to do so.
In the case of FCO, it would be interesting to learn whether or not there are good systems in place to prevent and/or warn crews about flocks. If there are, the evidence suggests that they don't work.
PS
BTW, I thought that the last civil aircraft built with no containment ring was the Shorts Skyvan (and possibly its derivatives?), which experienced a number of uncontained turbine disintegrations until the TPE 331 FCU was modified to prevent runaway turbine overspeeds when the gearbox drive failed, as it sometimes did.
In two cases at least in the 1970's, bits penetrated the fuel tank (in the cabin roof), and cabin, narrowly missing the quite startled passengers, who thought that simply being a Skyvan passenger was bad enough already without bombardment by shrapnel and having fuel poured all over them to enhance their customer experience.
Last edited by old,not bold; 11th Jul 2007 at 09:16.