MIAA to shoo birds away with P45M sound device

The Manila International Airport Authority on Tuesday said that they are planning to acquire a sound device that will frighten away birds from the airfield, thus preventing bird strikes on aircraft. The sound device is worth P45 million.

MIAA’s airport grounds operations and safety division chief Joseph Agustin said that the new device has two powerful speakers, and it will replace the sirens currently used.

 The sound device should be in place before February 2013.

 Apart from the sound device, the airport authority is also planning to invest some P23-million to cover an artificial pond found between the runways. The artificial pond absorbs the excess water coming from the runway, thus preventing their flooding.

 According to Danish ornithologist Arne Jensen, water from the pond attracts birds. “Normally, you don’t have wetland inside the airport because it attracts birds,” Jensen said on Tuesday, at the sidelines of an on-site visit at the airport.

As of August, about 49 bird strikes have been recorded since January.

Currently, and aside from the sirens, the airport uses pigeon-hawk replicas, and starter pistols to get rid of the birds. They also have falconers that fly their birds-of-prey at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport’s grounds.

Read on:  http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/279428/news/metromanila/miaa-to-shoo-birds-away-with-p45m-sound-device

Planes to soon have onboard system to scare birds

With bird strikes costing the aviation industry millions of dollars, plane manufacturers are now working on a system that will be installed in the aircraft to scare off the avians.

Aircraft manufacturer Airbus is developing a system under its Bird Impact Repellent and Deterrent sYstem (BIRDY) programme that will scare away almost every species of birds.

"Challenge is to develop a system that is effective for large number of species of birds found across the globe," Nathalie Papin, an expert with Airbus Industrie, said here.

According to estimates, airlines in the US suffer loss of USD 68.3 million per year while worldwide the carriers have lost USD 1.3 billion in direct damage and associated costs in terms of aircraft down-time.

In India, airlines have lost about Rs 18 crore in 2011 due to bird-hits and incidents of runway incursions by stray animals.

According to an Airbus study, in the incident of a bird- hit, 41 per cent chances are that an aircraft's engine or its nose, radome and windshield is damaged. While chances of fuselage or wings being damaged is just seven per cent, the same stands at three per cent for landing gears and one per cent for tail.

Continued: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/266223/planes-soon-have-onboard-system.html