have you ever wondered why there isn't a grate or screen in front of an
aircraft's engines to prevent birds from going into it I'm going to explain it
all coming up
hey 74 crew welcome back if you don't know me my name is Kelsey I'm a 747
pilot my channel 74 gear is all about aviation today I'm here at Incheon South
Korea and this is a view from my room all right let's get into the video after
the Hollywood vs. reality video that I did on the Sully movie I had a lot of
comments and questions from people asking why isn't there something in
front of the aircraft's engines to prevent birds from actually taking down
an aircraft and now I'm sure a lot of you if you saw a bird on takeoff you
would be like in this video I'm going to explain why they don't put something in
front of the engines let's get into it it's very natural to wonder why haven't
the engineers put something in front of these engines to prevent the birds from
actually going in there I saw a lot of comments people saying you should put a
screen door you should put grates you should put lasers certain lasers
first I'm going to talk about why you can't put something in front of the
engine if you remember the video that I did where I explained to how a jet
engine works you'll remember the engines are actually sucking a lot of air so if
you're putting a grate or a screen in front of that engine it's going to
prevent a lot of air flow from getting into the engine and won't be working
very fuel efficiently the more air that can get sucked into that engine the more
air that can be compressed mixed with fuel and actually burned and pushed out
the back of the aircraft which is what pushes it forward if you follow me on
instagram you've seen a lot of the stories that i put up on the 747 - 8
engines and a lot of pictures and stories because i think they look so
cool and while those engines are very large they're not even as big as the
engines that are on a Boeing 777 but our engines each
individual one is about 25 million dollars so you would think
they'd put something in there to prevent them because a bunch of geese or birds
going into the engine is obviously going to ruin its value of course if you were
a pilot and Matt Damon you would just fly around the birds you know what a
great pilot would have done not hit the birds that's what I do every day not hit
bird another thing to consider is the majority of birds that I've encountered
in flight have been below 3,000 feet above the ground level of that given
airport and the majority of flight time I've experienced is obviously above
3,000 feet now take an 8 hour flight as an example one that I just did a few
weeks ago from Charleston South Carolina to Anchorage, Alaska
we were below 3,000 feet for just a few minutes so the whole time above
3,000 feet our engines are not able to perform fuel efficiently because they
have something that's blocking the air from going in there you're gonna burn a
lot more gas now while the engineers can't design
something to prevent the birds from going into the engine they have come up
with a technology in the event there is a bird strike on takeoff which is one of
the most important times of an aircraft's flight there is technology
now on newer aircraft for example on the Boeing 777
where if it were to ingest a bird during takeoff and it were to kill the engine
the computer systems are able to prevent the aircraft from getting into a
dangerous situation the plane's computer actually adjusts for the imbalance and
thrust that it's being created on both sides of the aircraft an easy way to
understand this technology is imagine you're driving your car down the road
and the front left tire were to go flat the cars gonna want to veer to the left
the same thing applies to your aircraft get on takeoff the aircraft is going
down the middle of the runway and that were to lose the left engine from a bird
strike or an engine failure the plane is gonna want to veer to the left there's
new technology what it does is it anticipates the difference in imbalance
and thrust to help keep the plane going straight down the runway that is so
baller that is exactly what this technology does that's being put on
newer aircraft like the Boeing triple7 is there a way to prevent birds from
going into an aircraft's engines no but engineers are always looking for ways to
improve safety in aviation and the reality is it's extremely rare for birds
to go into an aircraft's engine in the thousands of hours that have had I think
I've only had one actually make it into the engine of an aircraft an all
commercial aircraft that you will fly in as a passenger have two engines and one
of those engines is able to have enough power to provide for the plane to
actually come back in and land again safely at that airport now if you're
planing just birds in both engines like so Lee and Jeff decided to do well
there's not much you can do but if you're a pilot and you're thinking oh
I'm gonna come in and land on the Hudson it's a lot less impressive the second
time if you want to understand more about how an engine works I'll put a
video here where I explain about the two different types of
on a commercial aircraft I look forward to hearing from you until then keep the
blue side up