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Comment by maltalex | Hacker News Reader

What’s worse - sucking in a bird into a jet engine or a bird-scaring drone?

Sucking a bird into a jet engine, obviously. Was this a rhetorical question?

The jet engine is mounted to a plane. It's designed to withstand bird strikes without exploding - they literally blast frozen turkeys into it with an air cannon - but they can still cause engine out situations that result in crashes or emergency landings and risk the lives of the hundreds of people on board. Not to mention the huge repair costs all that incurs.

I value the safety of the people aboard that plane far above the comfort of the birds that would like to live at the airport, to the extent that scaring millions of birds is worth doing if it's likely to save the lives of a couple hundred people. Though that's getting pretty close to the threshold at which it ceases to be worthwhile.

Also, if I was in the bird's shoes, I would much prefer to be scared by a drone than ingested into the jet engine...

I think the parent meant: What's worse to suck into a jet engine -- a bird or a bird scaring drone?

can confirm.

He was pondering what's worse for a bird: extremely low occurance but surely instantaneous death, or getting to live knowing you'll be driven from your homeland to eventual extinction from robot invaders and wind turbines.

I like how there are three different interpretations of the question.

...and that the "third" one is also amusingly absurd.

(Imagine a "bird-vacuuming drone.")

I think you misread the question, which could perhaps be more clearly phrased as "What’s worse to suck into a jet engine - a bird or a bird-scaring drone?"

The bird scaring drone can be programed to stay clear of planes. The birds can't

Birds are already programmed for that. It's called self preservation.

Airplanes are huge chunks of metal that make a deafening roar. Grown men are rightly afraid of coming near one.

> Birds are already programmed for that. It's called self preservation.

Not exactly. Bird strikes are a huge problem especially in "congested" environments, aka humans sealing up more and more former forest/agricultural land with concrete... and thus forcing the birds to airports as they usually have spacious amounts of grass land with ample space for insects.

There's a reason why bird strikes are most prevalent in city airports, simply because the birds don't have anywhere else to go. Worst case IIRC was the plane that emergency-landed in an NYC river due to colliding with an entire flock of geese.

Are they a "huge" problem? How many occur every day? How many fatal accidents do they cause - as a percentage of all flights?

What makes the problem "huge" is the fear of bird strikes. You can read up (e.g.) on https://www.thespruce.com/how-do-airports-prevent-bird-strik....

In absolute numbers, per FAA there were 13k bird strike events in 2016, with 262 deaths+279 injuries from 1990-2013 (so about 11 deaths/year on average): https://www.faa.gov/airports/airport_safety/wildlife/faq/

Obviously most birdstrikes are harmless but everyone fears a scenario like in 2009 in NYC.

Except evolution never programmed the birds to steer clear of large, fast-moving aircraft - hence the need to scare them away.

Before they used drones they used hawks to hunt other birds. Never really heard of this being a problem even then.

Depends on the size, altitude and your affinity towards birds/drones. First wind turbines now robotic nuance drones, birds have had it to good for too long I guess.

Haha, same thought here. I think the drone would be way worse. I really don't think this is the best idea though it could work until a disaster happens.

This is classic short-sighted engineering hubris. Realistically how much statistical threat is there from birds? And how long until this design malfunctions somewhere? If this is rolled out in scale and put in use at every airport, it's going to happen.

> Realistically how much statistical threat is there from birds?

From wikipedia:

"The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) reported 65,139 bird strikes for 2011–14, and the Federal Aviation Authority counted 177,269 wildlife strike reports on civil aircraft between 1990 and 2015, growing 38% in 7 years from 2009 to 2015. Birds accounted for 97%"

But how many did any actual damage? How many resulted in fatalities?

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