Evaluating the Effects of a Bird Strike Advisory System

Abstract

Bird strikes have operational impacts and cause economic loss to the aviation industry. In the worst case, the damages resulting from bird strikes lead to crashes. The highest risk for bird strikes lies in the area below 3000 ft and thus mainly in airport environments. Despite intense efforts from the airports in controlling the local bird populations, the number of bird strikes in these environments is still very high. Usually, Air Traffic Control is neither integrated into the process for reducing bird strikes nor do the controllers receive any specific information about the current bird traffic situation at the airport. For the project described in this paper, we assume a different situation: Air Traffic Control is provided with a tool supporting the controller with advisories to prevent bird strikes. The advisories are based on the current and predicted bird movements and the anticipated risk for air traffic. Potential advisories include rerouting or delaying of traffic. Especially when applying the latter, a reduced runway capacity could result. However, the effects of a bird strike advisory systems for Air Traffic Control have never been studied. The project in this paper therefore aims at investigating the consequences on an airport's safety and capacity when implementing such a system. For this purpose, fast-time simulations including varying conditions considering bird densities and air traffic volume will be performed. This paper describes the proposed research concept and the chosen simulation environment.