This is a risk for which airplane pilots are well prepared: the collision between an aircraft and a bird during the take-off phase.
A not so rare incident which generally presents little danger for the passengers but which requires adapted safety procedures.
This Sunday, August 7, passengers on easyJet flight EZY1877, which operated between Manchester (United Kingdom) and Bilbao (Spain), learned this the hard way.
After hitting a bird during takeoff, the A320 had to make an emergency landing nearly 40 minutes after takeoff, as reported by flight tracking site Flightradar24.
“
The pilot returned to Manchester in accordance with our procedures and as a precaution only
,” a spokesperson for the company told the
Manchester Evening News
newspaper .
The passengers finally arrived at their destination almost four hours late on board a replacement plane.
Read alsoThere is a snake on the plane: the big fright of passengers on an Air Asia flight
easyJet flight EZY1877 was forced to make an emergency landing at Manchester Airport after hitting a bird.
Screenshot Flightradar24
Ultrasounds and pigs against “avian peril”
“Bird hazard” is a well-known risk in the world of aeronautics, to the point that the largest airports have animal control agents, sometimes called “bird scarers”.
To keep birds away from the tracks, many techniques are used.
While the use of acoustic scarers (ultrasound, raptor cries through loudspeakers, etc.) or the firing of blank bullets are the most widespread, some are more unusual.
Thus, at the end of 2021, Amsterdam-Schiphol airport installed pigs in its agricultural land generally coveted by birds, as Franceinfo recalls.
Over the decades, aircraft manufacturers have adapted their aircraft to this risk.
"
The parts of the aircraft that are 'upwind', such as the leading edge of the wing or the nose of the aircraft, are reinforced to withstand impacts with hail or birds
" , recalls Xavier Tytelman, aeronautical consultant and founder of a treatment center for the fear of flying.
The resistance of aircraft is tested in particular using the chicken cannon technique, which consists of projecting blocks of gelatin simulating the weight of a bird at different speeds on several parts of the aircraft, including the engines.
Despite all these precautions, collisions with birds have been the cause of several air disasters.
One of the most spectacular, which miraculously left no one dead, took place in New York in 2009 and was popularized by the movie
Sully
.
On January 15, 2009, a US Airways A320 lost both engines after hitting migrating birds during takeoff at La Guardia Airport.
Captain Chesley Sullenberger and his co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles then make the decision to land in the Hudson River after only five minutes of flight.
The 155 passengers and crew members emerged unscathed from this accident.
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