The cannons that keep planes safe, one chicken at a time

(CNN) – Birds may be the undisputed masters of the air, but they have also been the losers in air crashes since the dawn of aviation in 1905, when pioneering pilot Orville Wright reported the first collision with a bird.

Every year thousands of birds get too close to an airplane, are unable to maneuver away, and are killed on impact.

In 2019, in the United States alone, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported more than 17,000 bird strikes, with thousands more reported and unreported worldwide.

Most crashes occur less than 3,000 feet above the ground (about 914 meters), during takeoff and landing, and only 3% have been reported during the en-route phase of flight.

Surprisingly, crashes between 20,000 and 31,000 feet (between 6,000 and 9,500 meters) have been reported, but less than 30 in the last three decades.

The wide open spaces of an airport can be a magnet for migratory birds and for those flocks that decide to make their home next to an airstrip.

Airport wildlife management teams use fireworks, lights, lasers, dogs and birds of prey, including hawks, eagles and hawks, to try to scare away birds from the airport environment.

Although these efforts to keep birds and airplanes safe can reduce the possibility of a bird strike, pilots still have to face close encounters with birds, large and small.

The dangers birds pose to airplanes

The possibility of a catastrophic accident may be negligible, but there have been incidents of bird strikes that have caused severe damage to a fuselage.

Probably none is as infamous as the “Miracle on the Hudson“of January 2009, when a US Airways Airbus A320 airliner leaving LaGuardia Airport in New York flew through a flock of Canada geese.

Both engines failed after engulfing the large birds, and Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles deftly guided the plane to a water landing in the Hudson River, and the entire crew and passengers were rescued safe and sound.

The same cannot be said for those who were on board two flights in the early 1960s.

After taking off from Boston in October 1960, a Lockheed Electra turboprop lost engine power after colliding with a flock of starlings, and 62 people were tragically killed in the crash.

Then, in 1962, two birds collided with the tail of a Vickers Viscount as the plane descended to 6,000 feet (about 1,800 meters). The impact was so strong that the horizontal stabilizer failed and the plane crashed, killing 17 people.

Those accidents prompted aviation regulators around the world to examine certification standards for commercial aircraft and engines and to develop a way to test aircraft components for bird strikes.

The Evolution of Chicken Cannons and Aircraft Safety

Among the organizations leading aircraft testing is the Aerospace Research Center from the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). Headquartered in Ottawa, the nation’s capital, it has extensive facilities and resources with expertise in aviation research, including aerodynamics, propulsion, aircraft icing, and structural and material performance.

Following the two crashes in the 1960s, the NRC, along with military experts, regulators, manufacturers, and pilots, created a committee to investigate bird strikes and create a device to test them.

The committee toured facilities in the UK and settled on a design concept from the Royal Aeronautical Establishment: a cannon powered by compressed air.

Ammunition? Carcasses of birds weighing between 85 grams and 3.6 kilograms

Aerospace Grade Birds

The NRC’s first barrel had a caliber of 10 inches, the diameter of the barrel, and was commissioned in 1968 and decommissioned in 2009.

Currently, the NRC team has four guns in its arsenal: with a caliber of 8.8, 12.7 and 15.2 centimeters, and what may be the largest operational gun in the world, the “Super Cannon”. with a caliber of 43.8 centimeters.

There are two different types of bird strike tests at the NRC flight impact simulator facility.

One of the tests targets structural components of the aircraft, such as the windshield, wings, and tail sections, and the other test shoots a bird at a running engine.

Since aircraft certification regulations dictate the size and weight of the bird and the speed of impact on a specific component, it can take weeks for the NRC team to prepare a test.

“The first part is the calibration of the barrel, to be sure that we are shooting the bird at the required speed,” explained NRC principal investigator Azzedine Dadouche in an interview with CNN Travel.

“To do the calibration test, we can use gelatin-based birds, or we can use chickens that we buy from the supermarket. Once we are in range, we use real birds to finish the calibration, and of course we use real birds to do the certification test. The birds, always dead, enter the barrel with their feathers, their heads, their legs, everything. “

According to Dadouche, the NRC acquires the carcasses of birds from poultry farms and from companies that have access to the necessary birds and have to dispose of them.

“We get these birds from specialized companies that use birds of prey to scare birds away from the airport area. Sometimes they kill small birds.”

The fastest chicken in the world

The combination of the air pressure in the tank, the weight of the projectile assembly and the length of the barrel will determine the speed at which the bird hits the test item, coinciding with the speeds used by the target aircraft during take-off, initial ascent, cruise, approach or landing.

But in the late 1970s, the NRC ran tests well above those speeds, faster than the speed of sound.

A 907-gram jelly-based projectile reached a speed of Mach 1.36, that is, more than about 1,600 kilometers per hour. Another test with a 907 gram real bird shot at Mach 1.09, over 1,287 kilometers per hour.

That led to a poster, still on the wall of the NRC, proudly proclaiming the research center as the “home of the world’s fastest chickens.”

Dangerous drones

Smaller bird cannons are in operation in companies and research labs around the world, but the NRC’s “Super Cannon” has been tasked with a new mission: drone crash testing.

There has been a proliferation of hobbyist drones that inept owners operate dangerously close to airports or even in airborne firefighting missions, which has resulted in the immobilization of all aircraft.

“This is a very important area that many regulators are working on, because (currently) there are no regulations related to the impact of drones,” Dadouche said.

The NRC’s “Super Cannon” has fired drones at aircraft windshields, tail surfaces, and wing leading edges at speeds of up to 250 knots, or 463 kilometers per hour, and reports of these tests are available to the public.

And while Dadouche and his research team do some serious work, focused on making the skies safer, he sometimes appreciates the humor in preparing poultry shells.

“In one of the projects, I had to fetch the chickens from the farm, and I had to drive about 25 kilometers with the chickens in the car. The smell! After that, I didn’t eat chicken for about eight months. And I warned to the technicians: ‘In the next project, you are going to look for the chickens.’