Bird strike inspection

Bird strikes

Bird strikes are a common problem in the aviation industry. Every time a bird collides with an aircraft, a bird strike inspection must be performed to evaluate the hazard. Although bird strikes may occur at any moment, they are more likely during the climb and descent phases of flight, causing potential damage to the aircraft or its engines.

The extent of the damage varies with the speed of the aircraft. In most of the cases, the encounters occur near the ground when aircraft’s speed is at its lowest, which means that the extent of the damage inflicted by bird strikes will increase with altitude.

When bird strikes happen, the aircraft are required to land as soon as possible and undergo a thorough inspection for damage to guarantee its airworthiness. Although usually benign, the occurrence needs to be addressed. Thus, performing a bird strike inspection is of crucial importance to assess the status of the aircraft besides the most affected parts – the wings or the engines.

There are rare exceptions when an aircraft experiences the loss of thrust and subsequent ingestion of birds into the engine air intake. For instance, on 15 January 2009, a bird strike caused the engine failure on an Airbus A320 while taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York, leading to its ditching in the Hudson River. Generally, a lesser hazard, bird strikes can still have a significant impact on the airlines’ operations.

Easier, faster, safer

We have combined our experience in aircraft maintenance and robotics with state-of-the-art technology so that you can achieve game-changing results. Our drone-powered inspection tool can be accessed anywhere and anytime, enabling aircraft engineers to perform aircraft inspections in one click. The damage assessment report pinpoints the exact location of anomalies and damages found. This information can be used by your structure engineers to add notes on its depth for a faster decision on the additional repairs.

Easy: The high mobility and flexible deployment of our drone reduce the resources required for manual inspections.
Fast: With our intuitive user interface, performing aircraft inspection and delivering data reports takes less than 1 hour.
Safe: An automated inspection process prevents human exposure to dangerous situations but also complies with high standards for safety and security.