Recently, our upgraded MiG 21 Bison made headlines when both the pilot and the aircraft showed their capability to engage a superior F16 Falcon, armed with state of the art AMRAAM air to air BVR missile, in an intense fight, near the LoC.
Following that, on 8th March 2019, the media reported the unfortunate news of ‘Super-Hero’ fighter jet MiG 21 Bison crash in Rajasthan, which seemed to have been caused due to a ‘bird hit’. Fortunately, the pilot ejected safely.
On 7th March, a GoAir Flight was grounded when it suffered a bird strike at Patna airport. The recent Ethiopian airlines crash is also being investigated from the angle of a possible bird strike, along with other reasons.
Bird hit/bird strikes are names given to any incident, where an avian species collides with an aircraft. Either the bird collides over the window screen or gets sucked into the aircraft’s engine. There are incidents where the bird collision has broken the window screen and hurt the pilot badly. When the bird gets sucked into the engine, it damages the rotating blades, further affecting the flight of the aircraft. Bird strikes happen more often during takeoff or landing, or at low altitude flight. The Wright brothers were themselves the first ones to have recorded bird strikes sometime during 1905.
Our IAF is losing more planes to such freak accidents, than in any combat mission. The Hindustan Times recently reported that about 10% of accidents in IAF are due to bird strikes. This is not a concern just for the military aircrafts but also for the civilian aircrafts. The damages due to bird strikes amount to over 25 crore per annum in the DGCA balance sheet.
In many airports, (both civilian and military), around the world, pyrotechnics or fireworks are some of the techniques routinely employed to disperse birds and stray animals from the runways during landing and take-off. But, with India moving towards green crackers and planning to do away with conventional firecrackers (as they generate a lot of smoke and haze), we need to explore other options at the earliest.
To gain a better understanding of the issue, I contacted the leading green firecracker expert Dr. Samrat Ghosh, from IISER Mohali. He said, “Apart from green firecrackers for festivals, I have also developed all weather, smoke-free, super-green ‘Super-sonic’ (loud noise) firecrackers which could be used to protect our Super-sonic jet fighters, whose biggest enemy is not the enemy across the border but the innocuous and ubiquitous avian around us!”.
When I inquired about its cost, he replied “Ours is a desi jugaad. Made in India, it’s an alternative to expensive imported sonic cannon for combating this avian menace.”
IAF or DGCA is yet to take note of Dr. Samrat’s Super Sonic Green crackers which could, as he proposes, save both our military and civilian aircrafts from bird strikes. IAF does have a dedicated Ornithology cell which is trying to mitigate bird strike hazards. Still, nothing effective seems to be in place to mitigate these accidents in India which happens almost every day.
India must soon find a way to avert these deadly bird strikes. Until then, bird strikes are certainly an albatross around the neck of those who do air strikes, and for those who fly civilian aircrafts.