For once we're venturing out, not too far, just about an hour and a half north to Bachman Lake bordering Dallas Love Field airport. This is actually a great place to take your kids and/or family to walk around the lake and watching airplanes coming in.
Like any other airport, Love Field has a problem with birds, this year collisions with fowl have increased ten-fold compared to last year (2016), according to an article in the Dallas Morning News.
Dallas City Council has now agreed on financing for a new high-tech infrared/electro-optical detection system called Pharovision, which could detect birds in real time, up to five miles away from the airplanes to improve the security of everybody involved.
Besides using other natural methods as well, like planting grasses birds dislike or using pyrotechnics to scare them away, they also put up some signs some years ago on the northern end of the airport, where it touches Bachman lake, prohibiting people from feeding the wildlife.
Even though modern aircraft can withstand collisions with birds up to five pounds, if a flock of birds crashes with the jet engines, they may damage that engine on impact, as in the famous "Miracle on the Hudson," where a flock of Canadian geese took US Airlines flight 1589 down and had the pilot do an emergency landing on the Hudson River. Miraculously there were no fatalities in this incident.
But it's not just mother nature, the planned new bird detection system would also warn the controllers of drones flying illegally in the airspace around the airport, people trying to enter the premises or simply detect FOD, Foreign Object Debris, like dead birds after a collision laying on the runway.
Both photos are available for editorial use through Dispatch Press Images or as prints for sale.
Sources: Dallas Morning News, Dallas City News
