Called audio control repellent system (ACRS), the device was installed early this year in the Tacloban, Bacolod and Iloilo airports.
The next airports to be provided with ACRS are Puerto Princesa, General Santos, Legazpi, Clark, Roxas, Tagbilaran, Dumaguete, Cagayan de Oro, Davao, Ozamiz and Zamboanga, Director General Ramon Gutierrez of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (Caap) said.
He said getting the priority of this bird-avoidance technology are major alternate international airports as part of President Aquino’s open-skies policy to attract foreign airlines to operate out of provincial airports instead of concentrating in Manila.
Costing P3 million per piece, the ACRS is but one of several means by which the Caap is trying to prevent airplane-bird collisions that happened more than 100 times last year.
The Caap Birdstrike Incident Report said since the start of the year, there were 16 cases of bird strikes in 11 airports; four at the new Davao International Airport alone and three occurring at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia).
Although most of the collision occurred while landing, taking off or approaching an airfield, curiously Caap recorded bird strikes on seven parked aircraft.
Bird strikes occurred in Laoag, Diosdado Macapagal International Airport, Busuanga, Legazpi, Naga, Roxas, Calbayog, Pagadian, Cagayan de Oro, the New Davao International Airport and Naia.
Ed Costes, the chief of the Aerodrome Development and Management Service, said aside from relying on piercing sounds emitted by the machine to discourage birds from congregating at major airports, they have also focused on the control of vegetation, such as cutting down trees and bushes around airports, the usual nesting sites of birds.
Limiting the growth of grass by constant mowing is also effective since grassy areas are the breeding places of bird food, while the use of siren or shotgun to drive away the avian pest is also employed.
“Bird avoidance is a complex problem because they become accustomed to the sound emitted by machines over time,” Costes said.
As a result, Caap uses a combination of systems to drive away the birds.
However, some of the schemes being offered to Caap are too expensive, such as the P200-million radar system, the first of its kind in the world. This system employs radar for birds alone, so that the birds’ location, especially of huge flocks, could be determined within a specified radius from the airport and the information relayed to pilots to avoid them.
Caap is waiting for the introduction of cheaper models.
Costes said Caap would like to duplicate a trend started in Singapore, where aviation authorities constructed an area where birds could feed, nest or breed, far away from the airport. He said this technique is being advised among provincial airport managers, where dumps are located some distance away from the runway so that birds could feed without getting in the way of landing and taking off airplanes.
So far, nothing fatal had been encountered by local pilots as far as bird strikes are concerned. The most hazardous episode are several cracked windshield and damaged engines. This is one concern that worries local carriers, since an engine damaged by bird strikes cost P5 million.
Records show that the most common birds involved in collision are heron, owl, pigeon, wild ducks and other migratory birds.
Majority of those recorded were of “undetermined” species, maybe because when suck or ingested by engines, there are practically nothing left for experts to determine the kind of bird that had been “eaten,” Costes said.
Modern engines are so designed that birds less than two kilograms in weight could be sucked by airplane engines without much damage to its internal mechanisms.
