All commercial airplane engines are required to pass a “bird strike” test before they can be certified for use. Engine manufacturers, including CFM International, which produced the engines on the US Airways Airbus A320 involved in Thursday’s sudden landing, test the engines physically and through computer simulation.
In the physical tests, the engines are revved to full power inside a test facility and absorb various kinds of birds, from those the size of sparrows to those the size of herons, one at a time. (The birds are already dead.) The engines also ingest multiple birds meant to simulate a collision with a flock, said Matthew Perra, a spokesman for the engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney.
To pass the test, engines must keep operating after the collision, maintaining enough power to take off, fly around the airport and land the plane safely, he said. That is because a jet with two engines has to be able to take off on 50 percent power.I guess it makes perfect sense. But where do they get the dead birds? Are they picking them up off the side of the road? Do they buy them from bird farms and kill them? What about using fake birds? Can you picture people starting up a jet engine and then releasing dead birds into it? Is it wrong of me to find this so funny?
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