We all know it. We have all heard of it. The sworn enemy of the pinnacle of human creativity and technology, of our marvelous ability to shorten the distances within the world, an aircraft; the sworn enemy of an aircraft is … a bird. Birds cause countless accidents by flying into the propellers and jets […]
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials have updated the protocol for reviewing wildlife hazards at US airports, including a ranking of wildlife by the level of threat that they pose to flights. The rankings published in a recent Advisory Circular (AC) intend to guide airport wildlife management personnel and inspectors in prioritizing the wildlife that should […]
A Swedish Gripen jet fighter crashed after colliding with a bird in southern Sweden on Tuesday, August 21, authorities said, adding the pilot ejected safely. “It was a bird collision and the pilot had to eject,” Johan Lundgren, spokesman at the Swedish Armed Forces told AFP. The pilot was on a training mission in the […]
Introduction On 7 March 2018 the Supreme Court for Administrative Law heard a case where no choice needed to be made – an airplane engine and a bird had collided and met their respective fates. Bird strikes are not uncommon in civil aviation: every year there are approximately 5,000 to 6,000 incidents costing $1.2 billion […]
Bird strikes on aircraft may be rare, but not so rare that airports shouldn’t take precautions against them. But keeping birds away is a difficult proposition: How do you control the behavior of flocks of dozens or hundreds of birds? Perhaps with a drone that autonomously picks the best path to do so, like this […]
A Gazette investigation reveals the city hasn’t addressed some safety precautions Aéroports de Montréal recommended to reduce risk of bird-plane collisions. The city isn’t heeding some of the safety precautions that Aéroports de Montréal recommended to reduce the risk of bird-plane collisions around a municipal organic waste treatment centre that Montreal is planning to build […]
John Uptigrove co-designed the Mosquito XE 285 ultra-light helicopter he was piloting when it crashed The pilot killed in a ultra-light helicopter crash southeast of Calgary has been identified by friends as John Uptigrove, who co-designed the machine he was flying. Uptigrove was piloting a Mosquito XE 285 about 5:30 p.m. on Sunday when it […]
A Russian military helicopter crashed on May 7 over eastern Syria, killing both pilots, the Russian Defense Ministry said. The ministry was quoted as saying that the Ka-52 helicopter was on a routine flight when it crashed and that the two pilots’ bodies were found after a search. It added that a technical malfunction may […]
Researchers at Oregon State University are working on a system that could potentially save the lives of thousands of birds killed every year by the spinning blades of wind turbines. The system — which detects not only when a bird hits one of the giant blades, but also what species of bird — marks a […]
Bird-human actions can end in tragedy — for bird as well as human. John Swaddle believes technology and a solid understanding of bird behavior can make those tragedies less frequent. Swaddle is a behavioral biologist at William & Mary. He briefed attendees at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science […]
