OT Plane Crash because of Birds

Off Topic, but hardware related.

It's been all over the news about the plane that crashed into a river in (I think) New York. They said it was caused by birds flying into the engine. Then they showed a report of the number of bird caused plane accidents and deaths each year. From 1990 to 2007 there were almost 80,000 accidents caused by birds. There have been numerous deaths and millions of dollars of damages.

OK, looking at the engines they showed on tv, I immediately thought

***Why dont they put some sort of screening over the engine*** It would only seem like a couple hundred dollars worth of hardware cloth would solve the problem. Why dont they think of simple solutions like this?

Jim

Reply to
Jimw
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I have to imagine it has been thought of. I also have to imagine it has to be a problem. Air flow over the screen at 600 mph can be a problem. Resistance and the support needed for the screen would be too. Not to mention that some stuff that is normally sucked through the engine could block the screen and cause even bigger problems.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

They were also worried about icing and deicing. You'd have to almost put the deicer directly into the engine itself and that can't be a good thing. Also, when you look at the forces involved in hitting a large goose at take off speeds or higher, you run out of materials that make any sense very quickly.

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

It doesn't work. When you get metal thick enough and hefty enough to withstand that mph of wind, it restricts air intake. And then, a full sized Canadian honker, which I believe these were, could go right through there at that speed anyway.

I'm sure that they've studied it to death. They have studied much lesser problems and spent much more on them.

As an aside, propane cannons were being used to scare birds in airports and berry farms until the tree huggers (and nearby residents) stopped it.

To some poor deluded individuals, geese are more important than humans. And in many sad cases, they are.

Steve

Reply to
SteveB

-snip-

I'm not a jet mechanic- but icing and turbulence come to mind immediately. Then weight considerations.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

Or how about a larger number of smaller birds that would have been ingested by an engine with the engine still running, but with a screen the screen gets clogged stalling the engine.

Reply to
trader4

If the screen failed during a bird strike, some of it would end up in the engine as well. Not good.

Reply to
JohnR66

on 1/16/2009 5:51 AM (ET) Jimw wrote the following:

In the Hudson River by NYC. It is considered a crash, but because of the expertise of the pilot, it was more of a landing in the water.

Reply to
willshak

Kurt Ullman wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@70-3-168-216.pools.spcsdns.net:

the incredible vacuum pull of such an engine would require something a LOT stronger than hardware cloth,and it wuold restrict airflow.

some Soviet fighter jets use doors that close over the normal intakes to prevent ingesting debris on the runway,and have auxiliary intake doors on the top of the engine cowling. Mig-29 does this,IIRC. Except this still would not have worked in this incident,as the geese were ingested at higher altitudes when the doors would have been open.

Reply to
Jim Yanik

I don't know. If it failed I would think the bird would have taken out the engine. I don't know that pieces from the screen would make any difference in real life situations.

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

The professional pilots at

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are really impressed by the pilot and his airmanship. Airliners don't do well at all in water landings.

And he did some really impressive flying before he ditched. Low altitude, engine-out, 90 degree turns like the one he pulled off to miss the buildings etc tend to be deadly in planes that big.

Regards Jason

Reply to
jazon48

On Jan 16, 4:51=A0am, Jimw wrote: ...

...

Actually, if it was Nightline you watched (I did, too, at least that section) they later had an (I think NTSB(?) ) engineer on who brought up precisely the problems that prevent the simple solution--namely airflow restriction and obstruction. Also showed some of the ingestion testing clips...

This subject gets aired every time there's a significant incident of course; the news media simply has a conveniently short recollection of what bandwagon they were on a couple of years or so ago. At least around here it was a big deal after an incident in Omaha w/ a FedEx (iirc) flight that had to abort after takeoff.

--

Reply to
dpb

A friend who has a window overlooking where it happened says what has been shown on TV does not show that in addition to everything else, the pilot put the plane down in a relatively narrow slot between two huge barges.

Reply to
salty

All they need to do is turn the engines around so they blow the birds away instead of sucking them in.

Reply to
DerbyDad03

Here's an idea: They could mount goose radar on the engines. Then, the split second before impact, a lot of buckshot is fired forward to blow the offending geese to shreds, thereby softening the engine strike.

Of course, that's much easier to say than do.

Reply to
mike

Since LaGuardia Airport is in NY, I think it's prohibited by law. If we assume that the pilot is in possesion of the plane while flying it, then section 11-0931-1(b) of the New York Environmental Conservation Law - Prohibitions On The Use And Possession Of Firearms - might cover it.

=A7 11-0931. Prohibitions on the use and possession of firearms. 1. No person except a law enforcement officer in the performance of his official duties shall use in hunting or possess in the fields or forests or on the waters of the state for any purpose: b. any automatic firearm, or any firearm which has been converted to an automatic type, or any firearm which has a built- in mechanical adjustment which will permit it to function as an automatic arm;

Reply to
DerbyDad03

I've gone through all the posts and between them all the reason(s) that screens etc. are not used in front of the engines were touched on in one way or another. I have been involved in bird ingestion of a jet engine. Ran a test where we fired a bird into the engine to evaluate it's response to the bird strike and then its ability to recover and achieve a minimum level of thrust. Thrust recovery of the engine, both in time and power level, is aimed at obtaining enough power to successfully be able to complete a take-off and achieve a minimum altitude.. Don't want to get into the specifics of "requirements". You can't put anything in the front of the engine for a number of reasons--Ice build up, inlet air distortion, potential for FOD. The only aircraft that I've seen with a screen in front of the engine inlet was the F117 (the small black stealth bomber). In fact, it has a wiper blade to keep the screen clean. The big bang that people heard was the engine as it went into a "stall"--that's when the flow of air is interrupted and because of the high pressure at the back end of the compressor, a reversal of flow occurs and out the front it comes--like a gigantic blurb. Things happen very fast--give you an example--In the test I was involved in, fifty people or so were seated so as to observe the engine inlet during the bird strike. No one observed anything unusual, however when the film was reviewed --taken at

1000 frames per sec (each frame therefore was .001 sec) the inlet of the engine filled with a large fireball that burst out of the front (with a few floating feathers) and then was sucked back into the inlet. And no one saw the flame. BTW, the bird was not alive. Jet engines go through significant testing in order to meet and exceed requirements relative to a bird strike, however, there are limits with respect to size and number of birds that an engine can tolerate. We actually x-rayed the birds during the selection process in order to ensure that there was nothing inside of them (pieces of metal or any other type of foreign objects) that would have a negative impact of the results of test results. Whenever there is an aircraft incident when both (or all) engines are involved, especially a power loss, you can just about bet the farm that it's not primarily an engine fault but more so related to some other outside influence--fuel contamination, fuel starvation, FOD, inlet air distortion etc. MLD

"Jimw" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Reply to
MLD

The airflow into the intake on a jet engine is significantly higher than the airspeed of the plane - and when, not if, the metal screen fractured and went through the jet it will do a LOT more damage than the birds!!!

Reply to
clare

Up here in Ontario we call them honkers "flying dogs" and a large number are no longer migratory - they stick around all winter. Time to open a hunting season on them again to get the numbers in line.

Reply to
clare

A few gattling guns would help. Maybe a few thousand of very large 2" screen could be done, but im sure this has been researched. hit something with 50lbs at 400 mph and make it not fail or reduce airflow is the problem, it might weigh 1-4000 lbs

Reply to
ransley

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