SEVERAL BIRDSTRIKES RAISE QUESTIONS ON TAA’S ABILITY FOR HAZARD CONTROL
(Posted 09th December 2014)
Birdstrikes, especially at the crucial time of takeoff and landing, are considered a major aviation hazard, not only inflicting costly repairs to engines but also endangering the lives of crew and passengers on board. While pilots are trained to deal with situations when an engine has to be shut down and return to the airport after losing thrust due to a bird ingestion, nevertheless anxious moments lay ahead from the time the engine has to be shut down and the eventual touchdown and safe return to the ground.
The downtime for the aircraft though, especially for a smaller operator without the luxury of having a plane on standby, is then bound to create havoc with schedules as, with an aircraft undergoing an engine change it will be out of service for as long as it takes to get a new engine on site and fit it, leaving passengers exasperated, agitated and often outright angry at the airline’s staff, not knowing that it was actually the handiwork of the airport authority responsible for the incident which then prompted the delays.
Airports located in a bird rich environment would ordinarily have well laid out work-plans for hazard control, i.e. chasing the birds away to prevent aircraft colliding with them. That involves vehicle patrols, firing blanks and putting up visual deterrents among other measures, all aimed to spare their clients, i.e. the airlines, the expense and agony over damage, downtime and delays.
Several birdstrikes on Fastjet aircraft in recent months in Dar and Mwanza, and in fact again last weekend in Dar es Salaam have raised the question however of just how effective the measures put into place by the Tanzania Airport Authority are, as the frequency of such incidents is just too high, and in the words of an airline official ‘alarming’, showing the urgency to get a handle on the problem and prevent yet more such incidents in the future before more serious consequences happen.
Readers may well remember the 16th of January 2009 incident involving a US Airways aircraft, which encountered a flock of birds, ingested several of them into the two engines and had to ditch on the Hudson River after the loss of thrust, thankfully, and largely due to the skillful flying by the pilots, with no loss of lives.
‘Birdstrikes can happen even if you have a very rigorous regime of hazard control. We in Entebbe have a very bird rich environment because of Lake Victoria and the wetlands near the airport. We keep our grass low almost like a lawn to make sure birds can be seen and not hide in high grass and then suddenly fly into the path of a departing or arriving aircraft. But there are many measures we use to keep birds away or chase them away because when a bird or birds collide with an aircraft there is always a high risk involved. Besides the risk it is the damage to the aircraft and the damage, if it happens too often, to our reputation as a safe airport. Airlines do not like to fly to places where they hear other airlines have a lot of issues with bird strikes. Airlines can insure against such damage but the problem always is that an aircraft is out of service while it undergoes repairs and that disrupts schedules. I don’t want to comment about what other airports in the region do, we all have our challenges and problems to deal with, but if it is true as you say that one airline alone had several in a row, then that is something that airport has to answer for’ commented a source at Entebbe International Airport but on condition of anonymity.
Fastjet presently operates a fleet of three Airbus A319, two in livery and one more recently leased but not yet repainted after one of the three liveried aircraft was returned to the lessor after the expiry of the lease. Subsequently having one of those three aircraft down for an engine change inevitably affects the flight schedules, as it of course also does with other larger airlines.
The question now of course on everyone’s mind is what exactly the Tanzania Airport Authority officials in charge of hazard control are going to do to reduce this unacceptable frequency of such incidents and what compensation they are offering to the affected airline after clearly failing in doing the job right in the first place.
