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DUBLIN AIRPORT IS looking for a better way to clear birds and small animals off its runway.
Together with Enterprise Ireland, the air transport hub has opened a tender competition for firms to research and develop new techniques to keep wildlife off the airfield.
A fund of up to €200,000 for the project will be allocated in two phases. The tender is facilitated through Enterprise Ireland’s ‘small business innovation research’ initiative.
Although they’re rare, so-called ‘bird strikes’ – when an aircraft collides with a bird – can cause considerable damage to an aircraft and pose a risk to crew and passengers on-board.
On average, there are five bird strikes per 10,000 ‘movements’ – take-offs and landings at airports around the world.
However, the strike rate last year at Dublin Airport was below average at 2.7 strikes per 10,000 movements, a decrease of 20% on the year before. There were 56 such incidents logged last year, none major, according to tender documents.
Scaring techniques
Dublin Airport currently recruits the services of two ornithologists, or bird experts, to monitor flock movements around the airfield. There are daily patrols of the airfield “from dawn to dusk”.
“There are numerous scaring techniques and solutions available, however none are consistently effective across all species of wildlife,” the airport said in the tender documents.
A number of ‘non-lethal scaring techniques’ are used to keep birds and small animals off the runway, including hand-held lasers, pyrotechnic guns and a vehicle that blasts audio of bird distress calls.
The airport also has one lethal ‘scaring technique’ in its arsenal: a shotgun.
The species of bird currently on Dublin Airport’s hit list include buzzards, starlings and pigeons. There are many instances where a pilot is unaware that they have hit a bird.
“The only evidence might be blood marks or feathers found on the fuselage (aircraft body) during routine visual inspections on stand,” the tender said, adding that it’s procedure to take DNA samples of the bird’s corpse.
While the tender is primarily concerned about reducing the risk of bird strikes, it also raises the issue of strikes with small mammals, namely hares, badgers and foxes.
The tender competition is open between now and 14 August.
Written by Conor McMahon and posted on Fora.ie
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So the police investigate this allegation from 2004 and they decide to take no further action?, cue the guilty verdict by social media 15 years later then.
@Uncle Montys oaf: welcome to the Real World. You should have chosen the red pill
Come to think of it, he is fond of boxes…
Shazam! You’re pregnant
FFS another one
@DavidOReilly: no great loss
I wouldn’t worry.. He won’t be long making them disappear
Least his Not one of the few famous people who are dead and unable to fight for their good name and reputation to be restored after sexual assault allegations
@liam ward60: ya, poor Jimmy Saville getting his name dragged through the dirt. Disgrace!
@Bruce van der Gutschmitzer: i think he means more like wako jako, nobody defending Sicko Savile!!!
@Brian Kelleher: i know. Takin the pish. Although…id actually be in the aul anti wacko camp tbh. Sick puppy!
@Brian Kelleher: are you seriously defending Jackson? You think the abusers are lying? If they are they deserve an Oscar. And look at culkin, he turned out great
@Bruce van der Gutschmitzer: you’re in the whacko camp? You realise you’ve other yourself I presume?
@andyearley: *outted… damn
@5hbeZh0I: there is a story breaking that the director of Leaving Neverland agrees that one of the victims’ alleged assaults couldn’t have happened as the place where it happened hadn’t been built until 2 years after he claimed the abuse stopped.
@Jackie Carvill Caruana: yeah, it sounds like he got the year of when the abuse stopped wrong. He was 10 years old, easy mistake to make
I’ll only believe it if he perpetrated these assaults while tied up, wrapped in transparent plastic, and suspended from a crane.
@Gerry Quinn: it’s not abuse if you’re submerged in ice cold water in a straight jacket and have an anvil tied to your laces?
I came for the comments
@David Malone: dirty fecker
Get out of that one
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