Birds : Hazards To Safe Flying
08 Mar, 2001 · 479
Wg Cdr NK Pant highlights the seriousness of bird-hit accidents for aviation and points out measures that need to be adopted to prevent "loss of prohibitively expensive aircraft and trained pilots due to avoidable accidents".
Bird hits continue to cause concern to military and civil aviation. According to one estimate, one fifth of the crashes of IAF planes are due bird strikes. The risk of bird strikes is particularly high for the fighter aircraft with single engines as it damages the compressors, disrupting airflow and resulting in mishaps. Even if the bird hits any other part of an aircraft, the pilot is bound to lose balance and control. A single bird hit by a vulture can totally damage an aircraft costing crores of rupees. Moreover, bird activity often hampers training and operational flying schedules at the air force bases.
India
where government agencies have been blind to the unplanned construction activity outside civil and military airfields, despite it being officially prohibited. The IAF needs to enlighten citizens on this serious matter since creation of a safe flying environment forms an important part of the IAF agenda. Air safety measures are never too costly compared to the loss of prohibitively expensive aircraft and trained pilots due to avoidable accidents.
Ornithologists are generally of the opinion that civic authorities do not maintain the minimum standards of cleanliness in and around airports, nor do they have an efficient garbage disposal system, leading to a significant increase in the population of larger birds like vultures, crows and bats. The air force bases and civil airports were originally constructed far from the cities. Due to the growth of populated areas, the city limits have not only touched the airfields, but in several cases spread beyond them, resulting in increased generation of garbage, sewage and other waste matter which become an attraction for birds.
Always alive to the gravity of this perennial problem, the IAF has tried to take all possible deterrent steps to scare birds away from its airfields and local flying areas in the vicinity. Several years back, it had requested the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), with which the renowned ornithologist Salim Ali was associated, to carry out an ecological study of the bird hazard at several of its important airfields. BNHS identified 10 most bird- prone air bases in the country and suggested countermeasures to deal with the problem. The causes of bird activity in and around the airfields were attributed to easy availability of food and nesting habitats. The BNHS recommended actions like removal of trees and shrubbery, mowing of grass and controlling flying during periods of high bird activity, especially around sunrise and sunset hours within the airfield perimeters. Outside the airfield areas, which fall under the jurisdiction of the district administration, the suggested measures were improving the civic amenities by proper disposal of garbage and sewage, and provision of modern slaughterhouses and carcass processing centers.
There was no problem for the air force authorities, in implementing the BNHS recommendations within the airfield, which was under their control, but the measures to be implemented outside the airfield required the involvement of civilian agencies. The IAF went ahead to cut the trees and shrubs around the runways, taxi tracks and parking bays with a zeal that attracted adverse comments from some ecologists and ornithologists.
The bases also started deploying groups of trained airmen as bird watchers, equipped with binoculars and shotguns to shoot birds found in the vicinity of the flight path in accordance with the universal drill in civil and military aviation. Perhaps, this is one of the factors that has contributed to the decline of vultures and kites near the airfields. The Service is now toying with the idea of using micro-light aircraft to shoo away the birds before the commencement of normal flying at the bases.
More than a decade ago, an inter-ministerial committee was formed by the Central Government to take necessary steps for sanitizing the environment outside the airfields. Subsequently, a feasibility report was prepared under the aegis of the Urban Affairs Ministry for providing solid waste management and drainage to human habitations around 10 premier airforce airfields located all over the country. The financial allocation for the task was also doubled to Rs 1 crore for the year 1998-99 for each air base. As the funds are given to various state governments which earmark them for the local bureaucracy, actual implementation on the ground becomes tardy, since local civilian authorities do not understand the gravity of the bird menace for aircraft.
Though the bird hazard to manned flying is a worldwide phenomenon, it is more pronounced in
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