Bird Strikes — myths and facts
Once, man looked to the sky at birds soaring majestically and dreamed of joining our feathered friends in the air.
Now over 100 years has passed, and using flying machines we share the sky, with those feathered friends — though occasionally bird and plane may cross paths. So what happens then? Well crm4pilot posted their top 10 birdstrike myths to help explain the situation to others, and inspired by the post I thought I’d share some of the most interesting video’s I have seen on the topic.
How dangerous are bird strikes?
‘It depends’ really — for a small single engined aircraft the danger of a single bird strike can vary massively. A high speed bird impact hitting the pilot can be fatal. Hitting another part of the aircraft may cause some damage that will put the flight in jeopardy, but also hitting a single engine can cause a catastrophic power failure meaning a forced landing or in this case, ejection.
For a multi-engined passenger aircraft, bird strikes are much less hazardous. One exception was when a airbus a320 flew into a flock of birds near Manhattan, resulting in a very famous incident when the airbus landed on the Hudson river. A more ‘routine’ example of a engine bird strike is below, where a Thomson aircraft at Manchester lost an engine at rotation (great video includes RT).
This Manchester single engine loss example shows how safe it is — you can see the aircraft climbs away smoothly after the engine is lost. Firstly the pilots are routinely trained on dealing with this exact situation, and every take-off includes planning for how to react in the event of an engine failure. Secondly, the aircraft and engine manufacturers spend a lot of time and money ensuring engines behave properly when ingesting foreign objects.
Single engine loss.
Complete power loss (and ditching in the Hudson).
Originally published at www.loveplanes.co.uk on February 10, 2013.
