The
FAA has been experimenting with ways to detect bird movements with radar for
quite a while, but since an airliner had to ditch in New York in January after
its engines ingested birds, interest in the systems has intensified. The FAA
told the Wall Street Journal this week that a test of avian radar in
Seattle, which started in 2007, has been promising, and new
experiments will be deployed this summer in Chicago and New York. "We're
very excited about the technologies out there and the ones to come," said
Michael O'Donnell, FAA director of airport safety and standards. The FAA system
still gets too many "false positive" radar returns to be reliable,
showing returns from ground equipment, airplanes, weather, and even insects.
However,
a company that makes bird-detection equipment for the military told the WSJ its
gear is ready now to be deployed in control towers. "The notion that these
bird radars aren't ready for prime time is wrong," said Adam Kelly, chief
technology officer for DeTect. "You can tell the difference between small
birds that would just be a blood smear on a plane or big birds that could be
catastrophic." DeTect and the FAA have talked about working together but
so far the two parties haven't agreed on a plan. The Web site for DeTect says
its operating software was specifically developed to track the unique
characteristics of birds and provides superior performance over systems using
modified aircraft or marine radar software. An Air Force user of the system in
Nebraska told the WSJ that the most significant problem with the DeTect system
is that it can be hard to distinguish between rain and birds, but he said the
system is helpful, especially at night.