Flight BW662: Strident measures needed to avoid a recurrence

Apr 30, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
Tuesday’s (26-04-11) incident on Caribbean Airlines flight BW662 could have been much worse given the fact that there are numerous chicken farms along the East Bank Demerara corridor, attracting a number of wild birds. What the authorities should do at this time is to look deeper into the incident and take stringent measures to ensure that such an occurrence never happens again.
Birds being sucked in to jet engines have a great impact. For example, a 12-pound, or 5.5-kilogramme, Canada goose struck by an aircraft traveling 150 miles, or 240 kilometres, per hour at liftoff generates the force of a 1,000-pound, or 455-kilogrammes, weight dropped from a height of 10 feet, or three metres.
When a plane is taking off, it is going 170 miles (275 kilometres) per hour and accelerates to several hundred mph. The engine’s fan blades during taking off are going 3,000 to 4,000 rotations per minute, and the tips of those turbofan blades are actually at the speed of sound or greater — 700 to 800 mph (1,125 to 1,285 kilometres per hour). When a bird hits one of those fan blades, there’s a tremendous energy transfer from the bird to the engine, and that’s basically why a bird can cause serious damage to an aircraft engine.
The problem of bird strikes on commercial airliners is a universal one. It has been a focus of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) since over US$600 million [Bird Strike Committee USA statistics on Bird Strikes] are spent annually to deal with the problem.
The Central Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom estimates a total of US$1.2 billion that is spent each year by airlines to bear the burden of repairing jet engines and dealing properly with bird strike problems.
I say with much concern that this week’s incident could have resulted in loss of lives and, in extremities, a major airline disaster around the Timehri area.
There have, in the past, been numerous bird strike disasters that claimed the lives of many. Since 1988, there have been 200 worldwide deaths that resulted in bird strikes.
On October 4, 1960, Eastern Air Lines Flight 375 encountered a flock of common starlings during take- off. All four engines were damaged.
The plane crashed some time later in Boston, killing 62 out of 72 passengers.
On September 22, 1995, a U.S. Force plane crashed shortly after take-off after the plane lost power to both engines. Several Canada Geese had flown into her engines; 24 people were killed.
Near misses, like the one in Guyana on Tuesday, included a U.S. Airways flight 1549 on January 15, 2009, when it ditched itself into the Hudson River after experiencing loss of both engines.
The failure was as a result of the airliner running into a flock of geese at an altitude of about 3,200 feet, (pretty close to the altitude which BW662 encountered the bird). All 150 passengers and five crew members were brought to safety.
On September 18, 2009, American Eagle Airlines Flight 5183 from Dallas, Texas to Oklahoma collided with over 100 pigeons during take-off on the runway. The take-off was aborted and over 34 whole birds were recovered from the engines and hundreds of parts were also found. There were no injuries.
If the situation on BW662 was worse, God forbid, there could have been an emergency landing at the airport since the aircraft did not reach very far out. A landing on the Demerara River might have been another option.
Perhaps all of these incidents mentioned involved large groups of birds. Perhaps one bird could not have brought down an airliner, or could it? This should be an eye-opener for all stakeholders.
Leon Suseran

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Flight BW662: Strident measures needed to avoid a recurrence

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