Tahoe Geese?

[Jumper Bones]

Well I say have at 'em...butI have to admit to not being all that big a fan of geese in the first place.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/e_3.jpg
In 1995, the Air Force lost an E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft up in Alaska, from ingesting a goose in one of its engines on takeoff. Losing an airplane is bad, but its worse when it cost $270 million in the first place, they're a national asset that the US really can't afford to lose, and worst of all they lost 22 aircrew along with it. I know people who were stationed up there at the time, they said it was terrible, those who were part of the clean-up crew were finding body parts everywhere. All from one goose. Now, it's an offense punishable by admin. action at that base (Elmendorf, outside of Anchorage) if you see birds around the flight areas and don't phone them in. They'll set off air cannons, or send people or dogs to spook them away, or kill them if necessary.

that and there's a ton of them where I live now, they seem to know that this is a hunting sanctuary so they're safe here. They shit EVERYWHERE. Plus, once again this is an airfield, although we don't have the tough policies about the geese that they do up at Elmo. I think we should.

[bad_roo]

Geese are obviously part of the axis of evil.

Bummer about the plane. Couldn't it take off on three engines?

[EPSkis]

Originally posted by bad_roo
Geese are obviously part of the axis of evil.

Bummer about the plane. Couldn't it take off on three engines?

I think somebody said that about the Concorde once...

[bad_roo]

A tyre puncturing the wing tank and subsequently igniting leading to catastrophic hydraulic failure isn't quite the same thing as a bird ingestion.

Anyway, we can always blame the French.

[Jumper Bones]

I probably need to look more into it, to see exactly what damage was done (hydraulic or electrical damage as the engines are the generators for those, or did the engine throw any turbine blades, etc), but you'd think it could. Obviously it didn't work out. But it also could depend on exactly when the bird was ingested, like did it produce any offset thrust/yaw when at a critical attitude or airspeed, or did the loss of thrust at such a critical time cause a stall, etc., etc. I'll ask my dad (he'd know), and The AD probably knows as well.

realize that's 1960's engine technology at its finest. Those Pratt & Whitney TF-33s were a huge improvement over the original J57s on the early model 707s (the E-3 is from that airframe), but even then they were pretty anemic, compared to today's standards - 21,000lbs of thrust per engine, roughly. I'd say that engine technology has been advancing at almost the same exponential rate as computer technology for the past 20 years, but once again, that's probably more in the AD's ballpark than mine. He engineers 'em, I fix 'em.

[EPSkis]

Originally posted by bad_roo
A tyre puncturing the wing tank and subsequently igniting leading to catastrophic hydraulic failure isn't quite the same thing as a bird ingestion.

Anyway, we can always blame the French.

I would imagine a 25lb ANYTHING being sucked into a TF-33 turbofan could result in a myriad of problems, the least of which would be actually GETTING a 335,000lb plane off the ground.

Bah ~ We don't need to blame the French for anything. Just give them some time & a spotlight. They'll take care of the rest themselves.


(pssst - t*i*re, Limey)