Birds of prey make for happy landings

01 November, 2008, 07:00

Big birds made of steel and their feathered kin are not a good mix. Airports across Russia are concerned about the number of bird strikes which occur during take-offs and landings. Latest figures suggest it happens around 70 times a year and has become a threat to safety, leading to the adoption of some unusual methods of keeping planes and birds apart.

For centuries mankind dreamt of conquering the skies, but sharing it with its natural dwellers has never been an easy marriage. With decades of flight experience, pilot Vladimir Gerasimov knows how serious a bird strike can be.

“It’s a really serious and frequent problem. I remember how a bird smashed through the windshield and spilt blood all over the cabin. When I went to the toilet to clean my shirt, everyone thought I had killed someone,” he said.

Similar cases are not rare in aviation and even the most secure flights are not immune from a spot of bother.

Ekaterina Grigorieva is a journalist and often flies with the Russian president.

During one of his trips the press corps plane was forced to make an emergency landing after a bird smashed into the plane’s nose.

“At first we noticed many people gazing at the nose of the plane and then we saw a huge dent in the fuselage from a collision with the bird. All this happened with all the heads of the Russian aviation companies on board,” she says.

Most of the accidents involving birds occur during the take-off or landing, thus giving airports a vital preventative role in the safety process. All possible gadgets one can think of, such as gas-fired guns that imitate a sound of the hunter’s rifle, are used to clear the area around the runway from the winged menace.

Sometimes attempts are even made to find a common language, by playing the sounds of birds in distress in the hope it will scare the birds away. Ornithologists say that the best way is the natural one – by using birds of prey as a deterrent.

Domodedovo Airport near Moscow was the first in Russia to start such a traditional but extraordinary practice.

Nika has been keen on working with birds for more than eight years now, and lately she’s been spending several hours every day training her falcon.

“It takes several months to train a bird like this one, but once you have just a couple of these birds flying around the airfield, you’ll see the huge difference it makes,” Nika says.