How airports protect planes from bird collisions

Birds pose a serious threat to aircraft, both during flight and on the runway. Unfortunately, a collision with birds is not uncommon in civil aviation, and the annual damage to global airlines from such incidents, according to experts, is more than $ 1 billion a year.

There is even a special direction in science - aviation ornithology, which studies the patterns of collision of airliners with birds, as well as biological and technological methods of dealing with such incidents. According to Russian and international law, special airport services are responsible for aircraft safety.

To scare away birds use bioacoustic installations, which are placed around the perimeter of airports. Such installations reproduce the voices of several species of birds and provide protection of the territory within a radius of 220 meters.

At the arsenal of airports are also pyrotechnic tools. These are all kinds of crackers that scare away birds with sharp sounds, but do not harm them. And during the periods of the most active feathered planes within the runway move with the headlights on, to provide additional security.

It is interesting that, in addition to technical means, birds of prey help scare away unreasonable birds. For example, the staff of Domodedovo and Vnukovo include specially trained falcons and hawks. The same practice exists at the airport of St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, New York, Antwerp, as well as in many other cities around the world.

And at the airport in Amsterdam and some other settlements, the bird is scared off by a drone in the form of a bird of prey, which patrols the air harbor around the clock.

Gas guns are another way to deal with uninvited guests on the runway. The microexplosions produced by them have a noise level of up to 150 dB and resemble the sounds of a shot from a firearm. In addition, birds are scared away with laser installations, which are especially effective in the morning and evening hours.

One of the prerequisites for reducing the number of bird collisions is the removal of landfills at a considerable distance from airports, since waste storage sites are usually a bird feed base.

Such a variety of ways to combat birds is due to the fact that none of them gives 100% efficiency. Despite the measures taken, the number of collisions with birds is increasing annually, following an increase in global air traffic.