Here's one for the loser books. I'm driving my 3 week old, pristine, TSX on the on ramp of the local interstate. As I'm accelerating, I hear a thud on the passenger side. I say "what the fxxx!" thinking I must have caught a big rock or stick.
Long story made short - when I get to my destination, I check it out and find a spray of blood the length of the passenger side, a few feathers, and some nice gouges in my side view mirror. Looks like it's TSX=1, Bird=0. Sucky way to get your first scratch, but at least someone/something died as a result.
My boys thought it was the coolest thing ever. After a trip through the car wash, only the cuts in the mirror remain. A testimony to man vs. nature.

 

Mother Nature =

 

but, mother nature still has 294857208745 birds and he only has 1 more healthy side mirror.

 

damn...I've hit two birds before in my first car before...

One while I was driving down a country road..all of a sudden a white bird appeard out of nowhere into my passenger side headlight/bumper...no damage, good thing my car had one of those steel bumpers...

The other was on my way home from college...driving along and this smaller bird just flew by me and hit my windshield...birt spun out onto the ground...somewhere..

I have no idea if there were any casualties...

 

K, all buddhists and PETA members please send hate mail now.

And at least it was your car that killed the bird. Fabio killed a goose with his face while riding a roller coaster in Busch gardens. Can't find a pic of it now, but his face was all bloody after getting off the ride. LOL

 

I'm surprised nobody has asked if you can birdlock your engine with a CAI.

 

I almost died because of birds. Coming back from europe our plane hit a flock of pigeons on takeoff and it took out of the engines. Had to do an emergency fuel dump and landing with -1 engine.

 

Birds are my biggest fear with flying. Actually, I don't have a fear of flying, it's just that birds are probably the most likely way to take out a plane on takeoff.

 

Are you serious. That must have been damn freightening. Where and when in the flight did it happen? How long were you guys flying with -1 engine? I guess it was a 747 that has 4 egines?

What funny is they test those engines pretty hard during developement so it really should'nt have been damaged.


BTW - Did you look for a honey when you thought it was all over?

 

ouch...luckily for me i've only hit a bird with a rental car before, it bounced off my windshield and i saw it land on the road in my rearview mirror

 

It was quite a few years ago and it was coming back from Italy. The thing is they dont really tell you whats going on, and I found out most of it afterwards. They all stayed very calm and informed up we would need to land and that we would need to dump some fuel first. They even told us to look out the window to see, like it was a good thing.

The best part was that they had to put up a couple hundred people in a hotel for 2 nights and the only hotel near by (in Venice) with enough accomidations available. was a hotel that was considered top 10 in europe

 

Thanks for answering...............none of my questions

 

I don't remember the exact numbers, but the FAA stipulates that turbofan aircraft engines have to be able to withstand the following birdstrikes without losing more than 10% thrust or requiring immediate engine shutdown:

1. 3 Canadian Geese -or-
2. 12 pigeons -or-
3. 30 small songbirds

They test this by firing frozen birds into an engine test stand. The videos showing the fan chop up the birds are pretty amazing.

 

yes i did. It wasnt that frighteneing because they did a good job of keeping us cool and making us think it was all routine stuff. I didnt look for a honey for the same reasons

It was a 747.

 

Wow, fdl, guess you got front row seats for an airplane cookout...

And my only experience with a bird was years ago when I went with my family on a trip in our old Acura Vigor. When we got home, we noticed that something was lodged in the front grill. Turns out we has picked up a stowaway on the way back that was lodged in the grill and burnt to a crisp. What a horrible way to go...

 

While I can appreciate the gravity of fdl nearly dying due to a flock of birds, I am somewhat amazed that it has been almost 3 hours, and no one has yet attempted a joke involving any combination of these "comedy gold" elements:

 

oh ya, i forgot about the fabio thing

 

fdl overshadowing fabio.. what's next fdl?

 

OMG I almost died laughing!

 

Not exactly.

There are three tests done, using large, medium and small birds. The sizes and numers of birds use depend on the size of the engine in question. An engine with a huge frontal area is required to be able to suck in more birds than one with a small frontal area.

And they don't use frozen birds for the test. The ones flying around in the skies are definitely not frozen.

The "large bird" tests are done with a single large bird weighing 4-8lbs, depending on engine size. The requirement is that the engine can't catch fire, release fragments, or lose the ability to be shut down properly. It doesn't need to remain fully functioning, so long as it does not do something catastrophic.

The medium and small bird tests require that the engine continue running, but is allowed to lose as much as 75% of power immediately.

This is the most recent rule: http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory...e?OpenDocument

Rules in most other countries are very similar.

In practice, most manufacturers test the engine to far greater tolerances than the minimums required. The large GE90 engines designed for the 777 were tested with birds as large as 12 lbs, without suffering catastrophic failure.

Also, every multi engine aircraft is required to be able to continue the takeoff if an engine is lost after reaching a pre-set "decision speed" (known as V1). Engine failures for a variety of reasons can happen and there is both planning and training for this. This guy seems to go over it fairly well, at least as relates to the 777: http://www.geocities.com/khlim777_my/fponeenginex.htm

Engine failures during the takeoff roll or immediately after departure happen hundreds of times every year.

Very few birdstrikes result in an engine failure. However, the common practice is to shut down an engine as soon as practical after any unusual incident, rather than allow it to continue running with possible damage that might cause greater problems. The fuel dumping sometimes needs to happen in order to get the airplane down below its maximum landing weight. Most long-haul aircraft take off with more weight than they can safely land with. In normal operations, the fuel will be used up in flight but n emergencies it will have to be dumped. Short and medium haul aircraft generally can't carry enough fuel for this to be a problem and most of them don't even have the ability to dump fuel.

VBTSX <- commercial rated pilot, now content to "fly" a TSX

 

It was routine.

The pilots get engine out situations thrown at them in the simulator at least every six months. Generally speaking the situations are far more complex than a simple bird strike and shutdown, so compared to what they train for this event was pretty simple.

Not necessarily an everyday occurance, but something that is very well anticipated, planned and trained for.

Every pilot on a commercial airliner has had the opportunity to "crash" hundreds of times, in order to learn how not to crash.

 

hmmm...think the bypass will prevent that problem?

 

A 747 can do just about everything on three engines, with a saavy enough pilot. However, a bird strike on a single engine general aviation plane can easily be deadly.

<---------------also former commercial rated pilot who now just flies a TSX


Even flying my TSX, I almost hit a hawk the other day...I saw it swooping down for a rodent de jour on the hillside, which I thought was pretty cool, but I didn't expect it to shoot right back up and back the way it came after grabbing its prey off of the hill. It flew about four feet over the hood of my TSX, and I hit the breaks just to be safe. Beautiful bird, just glad it didn't land on my hood (or drop the rodent de jour on my hood, either).

 

Yup, I know a guy who had one come right through the windscreen on his Cessna. One of the reasons that when I owned part of a Bonanza, I insisted that we replace the 1/4" with 1/2" when it was ready for replacement. On that plane, the extra weight towards the front actually helped with W&B issues.

A bird can easily go through a wing panel or the windscreen at normal cruise speeds. A large bird could hit hard enough to tear off a piece of the horizontal stablizer on some aircraft. A bird strike to the prop could severely damage one of the blades and possibly cause damage to the engine too. Not pretty. Fortunately quite rare.

I do know one 737 pilot for Alaska who was involved in a mid-air collision with a trout, on his initial climbout from Anchorage. They figure the airplane must have come close to an eagle, who wisely dropped his prey and got the hell out of the neighborhood.

 

Good stuff Venise, I love learning about aircrafts.

sauceman who wishes he could have Discovery Wings at Home, but can't.

 

Wish I could have it too.

Fortunately, about to move, so may be able to really soon.

The thing to remember is that almost all the situations you are likely to encounter on an aircraft have been considered, thought about and trained for. Birds, engine failures and other types of failures are all things that any of us could come up with in a few minutes of thought, and most certainly are allowed for (in fact, are required to be considered) in aircraft design and airline pilot training.

The things that tend to bring aircraft down are either outright failures of key structural components that are no designed to fail, or weird combinations of events that nobody dreamed up until they happened someday.

 

I had a nasty bird incident last year. I was driving a 2 week old Mazda Protege, and there was this tremendous "bang!" on the passenger side. I looked over and there was just a huge explosion of feathers, and no more mirror. A hawk or large owl had been enjoying some roadkill, took off when it saw me coming, and was introduced to my mirror at about 75MPH. Neither survived. My mirror ended up dangling by the remote adjustment cables. It also did a few nice arcs, etching lines into the paint.

Regarding birds at airports, there are some (Toronto and Halifax come to mind) that employ falconers to scare birds away. Others use owl decoys, or loudspeakers.

 

Yeah, on Sunday I flew back from Toronto. The plane ahead of us had a bird strike on the takeoff roll after hitting V1 so it continued on the departure, then had to return for inspection.

We were held up for about 10 minutes while they checked the runway for any potential debris.

Some airports have more bird issues than others.