Advanced bird radars have been used by NASA and the U.S. military since 2003 and can be installed at commercial airports today to immediately improve passenger and aircrew safety.
Nearly six months after the “Miracle on the Hudson” birdstrike to US Airways flight 1549 at New York’s LaGuardia airport, the FAA is still dragging its feet on making proven bird radar technologies available to U.S. airports. Systems available now on the commercial market can immediately reduce aircraft-bird strike risk and improve passenger and crew safety. Just this week, American Airlines flight 1256 was forced to make an emergency landing at LaGuardia, when it struck a bird at approximately 900 feet altitude on approach to the airport. Once again, the plane’s highly skilled pilot successfully landed the Boeing 737 safely with no reports of injuries, despite reported nose gear problems as a result of the bird strike.
The FAA however still insists that U.S. made, advanced bird radar technologies already being used by the U.S. Air Force, NASA and overseas airports are not ready to be deployed at U.S. airports and will “need years more testing”. This despite the fact that no one with the FAA has yet to even see – much less test – the bird radars that have long been used to protect U.S. military pilots and aircrews and the $2 billion space shuttle from birdstrikes. Instead the FAA is proceeding to install – with U.S. taxpayer dollars – more of the same foreign-produced “bird radar” at Chicago-O’Hare and JFK airports that the FAA has been testing since 2007 at Seattle-Tacoma airport. This is being done even though the FAA researchers are on record as saying that the system at Seattle has too many false positives from insects, does not produce usable data and is still “experimental”. To date, the FAA has only tested one foreign made “bird radar” and has not tested or even seen in operation at an airfield either of the two U.S. developed and manufactured bird radars that are being used operationally by the U.S. Air Force and British Royal Air Forces for tactical birdstrike avoidance.
NASA uses bird radars to protect the $2 billion space shuttle from birdstrikes during launches.
Current generation, commercially-available, U.S. manufactured bird radars can reliably detect and track aviation bird hazards out to 8 miles around an airport and are fully automated providing continuous, dedicated monitoring and real time bird strike risk alerting for runway for approach and departure corridors where 85% of aircraft-bird strikes at commercial airports occur. The real time information from systems already on the commercial market today can provide improved information and automatic warnings to air traffic controllers. That said, the radar data do not have to be used in the tower to provide immediate benefit to airports, aircrews and the flying public. At the minimum, these existing systems can improve the effectiveness of an airport’s bird control staff by providing much improved awareness of areas of elevated or increasing bird activity on and immediately around the airport so they can “be where the birds are” with the bird control activities. The ability of these systems to support more efficient bird control is already acknowledged even by the FAA so there should be no impediment to giving immediately access to Airport Improvement Program (AIP) funding for airports to acquire and use this technology.
Enough is enough … the FAA has been “researching” bird radars for over 9 years at a cost to the U.S. taxpayer over $5 million, yet has focused its “research” only on a single foreign-made system that even its manufacturer says needs more development to be used tactically. Commercially produced, U.S. manufactured bird radars are already being used for tactical, real-time birdstrike risk avoidance by the military, NASA and foreign airports and have undergone rigorous evaluation and certification for performance and reliability by NASA as part of its birdstrike prevention program. These existing, proven bird radars can and should be installed today at US airports to reduce the risks of aircraft bird strikes. Foreign airports in Europe and Asia in the aftermath of the January 2009 US Airways flight 1549 of are aggressively moving ahead to competitively acquire and install bird radars on a fast track and U.S. airports are rapidly being left behind.
