Image - Preventing bird strikes

Video of the Week - Preventing bird strikes The Bird Avoidance Model could help to cut down on collisions between birds and planes at busy airports. Video and image courtesy Virtual Laboratory for e-Science. Click on the above and go to section that begins at 2 mins 45 seconds. Encounters between birds and planes have the potential to be disastrous — just ask Chesley Sullenberger, pilot of the US Airways flight that just barely managed to land on New York City’s Hudson River after colliding with a flock of geese on 15 January. Such “bird strikes” are a continuing problem, with about 4,000 of them occurring in the United States alone in a single year, says the Federal Aviation Authority. The FAA and others would like to be able to forecast when and where dangerous concentrations of birds will form — similar to meteorologists predicting the weather. Researchers at the Virtual Laboratory for e-Science (vl-e), The Net