By Muyiwa Lucas For a distressed local aviation industry, rampant Bird-Aircraft Strike Hazard, BASH, or birdstrike, incidents are an overkill, if only for the safety of passengers and the cost of repairing its attendant damage to an affected aircraft. The recent BASH incident involving Aero Contractor airline, Dana Air and Arik Air, all within two weeks interval, raises cause for concern as regards the control of the incident within the Nigerian airspace. BASH is a collision between an airborne animal and a man-made device, especially aircraft. The term is also used for bird deaths resulting from collisions with man-made structures such as power lines, towers and wind turbines. Birdstrikes are a significant threat to flight safety, and have caused a number of accidents with human casualties, and huge financial cost to the airline involved. Miodrag Djukic, an aviation engineer with over 42 years experience in aviation engineering and maintenance, explained that it costs an average of $400,000 or N60 million to repair an aircraft involved in BASH incident. According to him, depending on the extent of damage done and type of aircraft, BASH is extremely expensive for aircraft owners to repair. For instance, in the case of the Arik Air aircraft involved in the incident, Djukic estimates that not less than $800,000 or N120 million would be spent on repairs, provided it affects only one of the engine blades. If the incident is more intense, then, he estimates that it could cost about $1.5 million or N225 million. This is because Arik`s airplanes are mainly new generation, whose spare parts are more expensive. This explains why industry operators put the loss emanating from

birdstrikes at N15 billion yearly. But, if the words of Mohammed Tukur, assistant general secretary, Aircraft Operators of Nigeria, AON, are anything to go by, operators are no longer prepared to carry the financial burden of repairing their aircraft involved in such incident alone any more. According to the scribe, there now exist a regulation in the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, Act 2009, which stipulates that any airport where there is a birdstrike incident, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, must pay the affected airline $250,000 as compensation. “We are going to calculate all that we have lost to birdstrike and demand for payment from the relevant agencies. Somebody has to take responsibility for birdstrike problems in the country. FAAN and other aviation agencies are complaining that airlines owe them, but we are losing money to birdstrike. AON is not ready to accept this anymore; enough is enough�, Tukur told the magazine. Indeed, FAAN has found it difficult to control BASH in the country`s airports. Tukur disclosed that the agency though bought vehicles with the intention of using them to chase the birds from the airside, and also use scarecrows, he regrets that it has proved to be an effort in futility, insisting that the birds are wiser now as they are used to seeing scarecrows without movement, and in the process, they sit on such objects and have fun. However, FAAN, according to Akin Olukunle, general manager, public affairs, has been making efforts to reduce the number of birdstrike at the airports by regularly cutting down the grasses and bushes around the airport environment. Besides, he disclosed that the authority has acquired

equipment to check birds at the airports, but had to drop it and adopt the integrated habitat modification, removal and flight schedule modification approaches, in compliance with International Civil Aviation Organisation, ICAO, provision. He added that birdstrike cannot be completely eradicated, but could be curbed drastically, saying it is a universal problem to aviation transport. But globally, the hazard level of birdstrike is on the rise due to increased air traffic and bird population as a result of environmental conservation efforts necessitating increased and improved control measures. Hence, the need for deployment of a multi-modal approach in combating the scourge cannot be over-emphasised. Since the vast majority of birdstrikes occur during take-off and landing at airports, the airline industry has implemented a number of preventive measures to help control the population of birds around airport facilities. The use of conventional non-lethal bird and wildlife dispersal techniques like pyrotechnics, propane gas cannons, hand-held lasers and bio-acoustic speaker systems, help in ridding the airsides of birds. Long Range Acoustic Device, LRAD, comes in handy for this purpose. LRAD is a planar array acoustic emitter originally developed for military force protection and security that is capable of projecting a highly focused, controlled beam of noise at extended ranges of greater than one mile at up to 80 decibels in volume. These methods, although require low capital to put in place, suffers from limited effective range and loss of effectiveness through habituation. Other measures include the use of simple concepts like border collies, placed around most airports to

to chase off birds and trained sharpshooters with shotguns to shoot at large flocks. Also, stakeholders have canvassed the use of modern equipment to tackle this menace. In his instance, the DeTect Merlin equipment system is a good example. In a standard Merlin system, the technology uses a dual vertical and horizontal scanning radar configuration to provide simultaneous 3-dimension coverage with dedicated scanning of runways approach and departure corridors from the ground level up to 15,000 feet above ground level, AGL, and around the airfield out to eight miles. This is enhanced by its wide-beam coverage that detects and provides real-time alerts of hazardous bird activity from aircraft flight operational altitudes to the ground level for tactical birdstrike risk avoidance. Additional countermeasures on the plane can help prevent strikes as well. Research has shown that lighting on the front of the plane causes birds to avoid impact with the vehicle. Apparently, birds will avoid collisions with airplanes if they can see the aircraft. For many years, AON claims to have been given assurances by government, which has, so far, turned out to be a failed promise. But, AON may be holding its peace now given the new arrangement. “If they (FAAN) like, let them act; with the new policy, nobody would have birdstrike without FAAN paying for it�, Tukur concluded. Tukur: Threatens to demand payment from relevant agencies