March 2, 2009 -- The story is now legendary: bird strikes caused both engines to fail on U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on Jan. 15, 2009, sending it to a watery landing in the Hudson River. Everyone on board survived.
Now officials at DeTect Inc. and the U.S. Air Force say that bird detecting radar technology available today could have prevented, or at least lowered the chance, of a bird strike bringing down the flight.
"We have the technology to ensure that bird strikes don't happen as often," said Ron Merritt of DeTect Inc., a company marketing bird- detecting radar systems to airports. "We hope that the benefits of this technology will arrive from [the interest in the Miracle on the Hudson] instead of lawsuits."
Bird detecting radar is based on the same physics used to watch air planes; radio waves travel into the atmosphere and bounce back when they encounter an object. Older radar systems use longer radio waves, good for detecting large objects like planes, but not so great at detecting smaller objects, like birds.
Today, bird monitoring largely consists of someone armed with binoculars scanning the horizon. The system works well on sunny days, but at night or during foggy periods there are obvious problems.
Newer radar systems, like the one being tested by DeTect Inc. and others use radio waves 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) long, small enough to see planes and birds of all size and number.
DeTect's bird detection radar consists of two sets of radar mounted on a medium truck trailer. One set gives a 360 degree view of bird activity. The other radar unit is tilted on its side and usually aligned with a runway to determine bird elevation.
The bird's location can then be sent to a person on the ground to scare birds away before they near an airfield, or could be radioed to pilots so they could change their flight path or take other actions to avoid the animals.
One place you won't immediately see the information going is into civilian aircraft control towers. All equipment in control towers must be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, which is currently testing the equipment.The U.S. Air Force is allowed non-FAA approved equipment in their control towers however, because a special officer, the Supervisor of Flying, is authorized to receive such information, said Eugene LeBeouf, the Chief of the USAF Bird/Wildlife Aircraft Strike Hazard Team.
The U.S. Air Force is currently testing bird strike radar systems at four airports and one bombing range. Each radar unit gathers data about a different aspect of bird and aircraft interactions, from individual starlings to flocks of Canada geese around low level bombing runs to high altitude dog fights.
Using the data gathered from these five bird radar units, the USAF wants to develop a handbook, for how pilots and airports can most effectively use bird strike radar.
Bird strike radar is estimated to cost about $300,000 to $500,000 for each unit. Merritt claims that by reducing the number of bird strikes by even 10 percent will pay back the cost of the radar system. DeTect Inc. claims that its radar system can reduce bird strikes by up to 80 percent.
Officials and both DeTect Inc. and the USAF say that bird strike radar can't prevent all bird strikes. Birds are simply too good at flying, able to perform maneuvers and change course much more quickly that any human-controlled aircraft.
"Birds can do a lot of things that we are still learning how to do," said LeBeouf. "They wrote the book on flying, we are just poor students."
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