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Re: 'Perfect storm': Pilots of Navy jet had few options after bird strike, expert says

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In article <t15o3i$2qs66$88@news.freedyn.de>
governor.swill@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Too bad it didn't crash on local Democrat headquarters.
>

The two military pilots whose plane crashed last September after 
a bird strike near Fort Worth had little to no way to prevent 
the crash, an aviation safety expert said.

Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the U.S. Department 
of Transportation, reviewed the cockpit video obtained this week 
by the Star-Telegram. Schiavo said the pilots, both of whom 
ejected at the last second, were up against a “perfect storm” 
when they lost the jet’s single engine.

“This aircraft had all the bad things lined up against it,” she 
said. “They just had everything working against them.”

A Navy instructor and a Marine student pilot were flying a T-45C 
Goshawk on a training flight from Corpus Christi to the Naval 
Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth. As the jet made its 
final approach, a 4.5-pound vulture appeared directly in front 
of it and was ingested into the engine, according to the video 
and a Navy report also obtained by the Star-Telegram.

In the seconds after the bird was sucked into the engine, one of 
the pilots can be heard swearing and then radioing in an 
emergency landing. But as landing instructions come over the 
radio, competing with the sounds of alarms in the cockpit, the 
pilot follows up with another transmission.

“We’re not gonna make it,” he says.

The plane then dips suddenly toward the ground, and the trees 
below come closer into focus as the pilot yells, “Standby to 
eject. Pull up! Pull up!”

Thirty seconds after the bird strike, the plane plummeted into a 
dense Lake Worth neighborhood. The two pilots ejected and 
survived the crash, although the student pilot sustained serious 
injuries. The plane crashed through the neighborhood, damaging 
multiple homes and injuring three civilians, although no one was 
killed.

Schiavo, who was inspector general from 1990 to 1996, has been 
highly critical of the airline industry and federal regulators 
and now works as an aviation litigator. She has appeared in 
numerous television programs about airline crash investigations.

After reviewing the Navy report and the flight video, Schiavo 
said she doesn’t see a realistic way that the two pilots 
could’ve avoided the crash.

To start with, birds don’t show up on a plane’s radar unless 
they’re in an unusually large flock, she said, which means these 
pilots wouldn’t have known about the bird hazard until they 
physically saw the vulture.

“Unfortunately, the first knowledge that a pilot has — they’re 
much very like what’s in that video — is, boom, there’s a bird 
in your windshield or your engine,” Schiavo said.

And because the jet they were flying had just a single engine, 
the pilots were left entirely without power once the bird was 
ingested.

A plane can still be steered after it loses power, Schiavo said, 
and pilots are typically taught to glide an aircraft that loses 
power. But the T-45C Goshawk isn’t a very glide-able plane, she 
said, because of its relatively stubby wings.

Plus, gliding any plane requires at least some airflow over the 
wings. Based on the sudden dive that the trainer jet takes, 
according to the video, it likely lost airflow, too, Schiavo 
said.

“If somebody wanted to play devil’s advocate, they’d say, ‘Well, 
maybe they could’ve set it up to glide.’ I doubt it,” she said. 
“I think they were too close to the ground and too close to the 
runway.”

Reports of bird strikes are increasing in the United States, 
according to a voluntary database maintained by the Federal 
Aviation Administration. That database reported 1,800 wildlife 
strikes involving civil aircraft in 1990, compared with 16,000 
in 2018. In the past 15 years, there have been more than 185,000 
wildlife strikes, according to the FAA database, including 32 
that fully destroyed the aircraft.

In perhaps the most well-known example, US Airways Flight 1549 
crashed into New York’s Hudson River in 2009 after hitting a 
flock of geese that took out both engines. Pilot Chesley “Sully” 
Sullenberger glided the plane into the river, and everyone on 
board survived.

Both Schiavo and the FAA pointed to growing bird populations as 
one factor in the rising number of aircraft strikes.

Texas has seen an increase in the population of black vultures, 
the type of bird that downed the trainer jet, for at least 50 
years.

Schiavo said some bird strikes can be prevented by intentional 
land-use practices that don’t attract birds, and by scaring 
birds away from runway areas with sounds and lights. She noted 
that these practices often can’t be applied off airport 
property, which limits their effectiveness.

She also said drones can be deployed to spot bird flocks in 
order to warn pilots, although that approach isn’t widely used.

The FAA says on its website that it has plans to expand its 
research into wildlife risk management in the proximity of 
airports.

Comments:

Horniphous
11 hours ago

one could design an anti-aircraft weapon based on this, if a 
vulture brings down a military jet that easy...  h ross perot  
said that about the vietnam war tactics...

https://news.yahoo.com/perfect-storm-pilots-navy-jet-
225938985.html

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Re: 'Perfect storm': Pilots of Navy jet had few options after bird strike, expert says Fred J McCall <fjmccall@gmail.com> - 2022-09-16 10:36 +0200
  Re: 'Perfect storm': Pilots of Navy jet had few options after bird strike, expert says a425couple <a425couple@hotmail.com> - 2022-09-16 08:49 -0700
    Re: 'Perfect storm': Pilots of Navy jet had few options after bird strike, expert says Mattb <trdumbassdell12345@gmail.com> - 2022-09-16 08:54 -0700

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