Sea-Tac radar to prevent bird strikes

One year after a flock of Canada geese caused a US Airways jet to crash land in New York City's Hudson River, officials at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are taking unprecedented steps to prevent wildlife from interfering with airplane travel.

Sea-Tac recently became the first U.S. airport to deploy a radar system that shows real-time bird activity around the airport, officials announced Thursday.

"This technology will give us situational awareness of the entire airfield, day or night," said Steve Osmek, Sea-Tac's senior wildlife biologist. "It will be like wearing a huge pair of binoculars."

Seattle biologists and University of Illinois researchers have been working on the system since 2007, Osmek said. Last month, the project moved to the "operations phase," with the system being linked to a portable laptop.

Airport spokesman Perry Cooper said funding for the project is coming from the Federal Aviation Administration and the University of Illinois. He didn't know the total cost.

The system utilizes three radar devices — two on top of the airport's office building and one between the runways. It can track birds eight miles away and 3,000 feet up, Osmek said.

But because the technology can't tell the size of the birds it locates, people still need to decide if a plane is at risk.

"It can show one sparrow," Osmek said, speaking over the noise of planes landing behind him. "What it doesn't do so well is assessing risk. That's something that humans have to do. There's a big difference between a sparrow and a flock of Canada geese."

The radar also cannot tell the exact altitude of the birds it displays.

Now, when Osmek and his team sees birds near the airport, they alert pilots and sometimes scare the birds away using pyrotechnics. But there are too many birds and too tight a flight schedule to take drastic measures, such as changing a plane's route, in every case, Osmek acknowledged.

In 2009, airplanes departing from and arriving at Sea-Tac hit about 100 birds, Cooper said, about the same number that were struck in 2008. Nationwide, more than 7,000 bird strikes are reported each year.

The problem gained increased attention after US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of geese two minutes after leaving from LaGuardia Airport. Both engines failed, but Captain Chesley Sullenberger managed to land the plane in the Hudson River. All 155 passengers and crew survived.

Coyote deterrent

Sea-Tac officials also just finished their system for deterring coyotes — a special fence surrounding the runways, Osmek announced.

The chain-link barrier, completed Dec. 21, uses angled underground fencing to prevent the animals from digging beneath it. The fence is expected to reduce the number of coyotes entering the airfield "almost to zero," the biologist said.

Planes have hit coyotes while landing at Sea-Tac in each of the past two years, officials said. While those incidents didn't do any significant damage, a coyote is large enough that if it were sucked into a plane engine, the engine could explode, Osmek said.

The fence has been under construction since 2008, he said.

Brian Rosenthal: 206-464-3195 or brosenthal@seattletimes.com