Amazing birdstrike at EDDL/DUS
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Sydney NSW Australia
Posts: 3,051
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
200+ birdstrike.
just found this in the local paper,
any news on the damage done to the engine? or is the ingestion of 200 starlings well within the engines tolerance for such damage?
Join Date: May 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 429
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Cannuckbirdstrike.... you actually want to... control starlings?!?!?!?
Praiseworthy as the objective is, I'm afraid that serious pursuit of it would only land you an IgNobel. Have a look here to see what starling flock looks like. These birdies can keep 25 kt cruising speed for hours, like short grass and are not easily intimidated. The only current realistic solution is to stop flying whenever flock of them is detected near the airport.
Praiseworthy as the objective is, I'm afraid that serious pursuit of it would only land you an IgNobel. Have a look here to see what starling flock looks like. These birdies can keep 25 kt cruising speed for hours, like short grass and are not easily intimidated. The only current realistic solution is to stop flying whenever flock of them is detected near the airport.
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Ballard
Age: 76
Posts: 10
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Testing for Bird Strikes
Have you ever heard the story of about the time a Britsh train mfg asked to use the device Boeing uses to test windscreens? Boeing sent the catapult to Britian and after it had been there a couple months and was set up they get a call here in the Seattle Testing Facility. "What can we do to increase the strength of our windscreen design on our new locomotive? We put a med size turkey in it. Fire at the screen and the bird doesn't stop untill it is lodged in the electrical pannel behind the engineers seat! 
Not good mate" After some give and take with the engineers in England, the Boeing engineer says. "Thaw the bird first"
Not good mate" After some give and take with the engineers in England, the Boeing engineer says. "Thaw the bird first"
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Canada
Posts: 141
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Clandestino, with all due respect I am intimately familiar with Starlings, their flocking behaviour and the hazard they present to aircraft. I am also very familiar with habitat management techniques that are very effective at addressing flocks of starlings.
Understanding what is attracting the Starlings and removing that attractant is a very effective long term solution. It is done regularly at airports. Unfortunatley, many people fail to understand how effective habitat management is to control bird hazards.
I so completely agree that if a flock of strlings is detected that presents a hazard to aircraft departures and arrivals due the failure of habitat management that operations need to be modified until the hazard is removed.
Understanding what is attracting the Starlings and removing that attractant is a very effective long term solution. It is done regularly at airports. Unfortunatley, many people fail to understand how effective habitat management is to control bird hazards.
I so completely agree that if a flock of strlings is detected that presents a hazard to aircraft departures and arrivals due the failure of habitat management that operations need to be modified until the hazard is removed.
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: France
Posts: 2,315
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Just out of (local) interest, could you expound a bit?
Observing them here, just before they start migrating, would make me say those large flocks move around pretty randomly, searching for another food source.
What kind of habitat management techniques are effective in addressing that?
CJ
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Oxford, UK
Posts: 1,546
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Birdstrike
Amazing birdstrike sequence of photos posted by a 17 year old in "Spotter's Corner" may be overlooked by all you grizzly professional pilots....
However if I were in your seats, I would be very interested in preventing a mess like that all over my shiny airbus, by insisting that airfield management adopted some of the suggestions made later on his thread. Can we put it somewhere more conspicuous than "spotter's corner", mods?
However if I were in your seats, I would be very interested in preventing a mess like that all over my shiny airbus, by insisting that airfield management adopted some of the suggestions made later on his thread. Can we put it somewhere more conspicuous than "spotter's corner", mods?
Ich bin ein Prooner.
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Home of the Full Monty.
Posts: 511
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
The German paper carrying these pictures reckons the objects labelled "2" in that second photo are individual birds passing by the cockpit.
Look more like pitot tubes to me.
Look more like pitot tubes to me.
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Hanging off the end of a thread
Posts: 33,056
Received 2,927 Likes
on
1,250 Posts
If you're going to hit a bird, you need to do it in style
Glad to see there was a happy outcome from this. 
From and more details
Bird strike! The moment 200 starlings were sucked into passenger jet engine on take-off | Mail Online
From and more details
Bird strike! The moment 200 starlings were sucked into passenger jet engine on take-off | Mail Online
Join Date: May 2008
Location: London
Age: 50
Posts: 179
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
WOW,
Germania must be very unlucky this is the 3rd time this week this has happened. You would have thought the birds would have learned by now.
Come on nutlose, keep up
Germania must be very unlucky this is the 3rd time this week this has happened. You would have thought the birds would have learned by now.
Come on nutlose, keep up
I Hit One at Night
"Birds don't fly in clouds, and you will never hit one at night"
Forewarned is Forearmed
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: uk
Age: 60
Posts: 227
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I will apologise in advance for going off thread but, I would like to raise the fact that Birds certainly do fly at night, Lapwings are a classic example of a species that do.
Numerous very serious strikes have occured at night one that comes to mind was in France involing a Falcon 20 in 1995 which resulted in 10 fatalities.
Birds can turn up on an airfield at night or its approaches without warning for many reasons such as bad weather for example Fog / high winds which prevents them reaching their normal roosting site, causing them to roost on the airfield or surrounding areas, only to be disturbed and placed in the path of aircraft.
Here in the UK the annual migration of birds is well under way and there will be an increase in strikes especially at night due to the mass movement of various species.
Tea break over... back out on Patrol
Numerous very serious strikes have occured at night one that comes to mind was in France involing a Falcon 20 in 1995 which resulted in 10 fatalities.
Birds can turn up on an airfield at night or its approaches without warning for many reasons such as bad weather for example Fog / high winds which prevents them reaching their normal roosting site, causing them to roost on the airfield or surrounding areas, only to be disturbed and placed in the path of aircraft.
Here in the UK the annual migration of birds is well under way and there will be an increase in strikes especially at night due to the mass movement of various species.
Tea break over... back out on Patrol
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Sonoma, CA, USA
Age: 79
Posts: 143
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I, too, hit one at night
"Birds don't fly in clouds, and you will never hit one at night"
The impact knocked our small rechargeable flashlights off the gutter beneath the windshield. When we landed at LAX we found duck feet and Mallard colored stuck feathers in the right windshield wiper.
Since it was on his side, I made the FO clean up the mess. The hit sure scared the **** out of us.
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: France
Posts: 2,315
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I thougt the subject of birds "in IMC" has already been treated repeatedly here on PPRuNe.
The answer being simply, that birds don' fly under 100% IMC either, but that at 30 to 50 kts they have far more ways to remain between cloud layers and are far better equipped to aviate and navigate under those conditions, even at night, than we are, barging along at 300+ kts, and usually not 'looking' where we're going, unlike them...
CJ
The answer being simply, that birds don' fly under 100% IMC either, but that at 30 to 50 kts they have far more ways to remain between cloud layers and are far better equipped to aviate and navigate under those conditions, even at night, than we are, barging along at 300+ kts, and usually not 'looking' where we're going, unlike them...
CJ