Sunday, August 17, 2014

A Peep into Bird Hits to Airliners: Glaring Lacuna in meeting people's safety while in air

Re: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/424655/192-people-jetblue-flight-escape.html

*All 192 people on board a JetBlue flight headed to New York had a lucky
escape when the plane's left engine caught fire while taxiing before
takeoff at San Juan airport in Puerto Rico.*
Bird hit the engine while take off, said Jet Airways according to a newspaper report.

Now look at the thin safety basis on which modern jetliners seem to be designed:

INTERNATIONAL BIRD STRIKE COMMITTEE
IBSC25/WP-IE1
Amsterdam, 17-21 April 2000
JET ENGINE CERTIFICATION STANDARDS
Paul Eschenfelder
US Air Line Pilots Association, 16326 Cranwood, Spring, Texas 77379, USA
Email: eschenfelder@compuserve.com
Abstract
The ability of modern jet engines to ingest birds and continue to operate is
largely misunderstood or not contemplated at all in the aviation industry.
Currently there is not one jet engine operating in the world that is certified to
ingest one large bird (goose, swan, stork, pelican, vulture, etc) and continue to
operate. Ingestion of smaller birds is on a sliding scale of small proportion.
The effort to harmonize bird ingestion rules between the FAA and JAA has
failed. Controversy erupted in recent certification meetings regarding the
database being used to certify engines. Additionally, should only rotating
engine parts meet certain standards, or all engine parts exposed to impact
meet standards? None of the work done by or papers presented to IBSC
regarding bird ingestion are used in developing certification standards.
Flightcrew members do not know, nor are they required to know, how fragile
their engines are. Airport bird control personnel cannot appreciate the
importance of their work unless they understand the small number of birds the
engines can ingest and continue to operate. The industry needs education on
the importance of strike avoidance due to the thin safety margin provided by
engine ingestion standards.

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