Birds and planes coexist over Israeli skies

October 14, 2011 - 9:44 AM by David

When an Israel Air Force F-15 recently took off from the Tel Nof Air Base for a routine training flight, it was more than luck that enabled to land safely.

Once airborne, according to a report in Yediot Aharonot, the crew spotted a flock of pelicans flying in their direction and changed their course so not to collide with the birds. Unfortunately, five pelicans still hit the aircraft, with some hitting the F-15′s engines directly. The jet’s right engine sustained some damage but remained operational, while its left engine caught on fire and malfunctioned. The crew was able to land safely at Tel Nof.

The crew’s awareness of the dangers of flock of pelicans represented was due to the lifelong research of Yossi Leshem – the ‘birdman of Israel.’ The 63-year-old Leshem – an award-winning Israeli ornithologist and Israel Air Force veteran – is a world-wide expert on the subject of reducing collisions between aircraft and birds

Armed with the slogan “Migrating birds know no boundaries,” Leshem decided to study migrating flocks for his PhD thesis at Tel Aviv University in 1980, focusing on the 500 million birds of 300 different species who fly through Israel on their way to and from Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Leshem later founded and still directs the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration – and his latest book – a children’s book titled The Man Who Flies describes how he helped the IAF sharply reduce its bird strikes, During his research,
Leshem discovered that the problem was especially severe in Israel because of the unusually high number of birds and planes sharing the country’s tiny airspace. Upon his advice, IAF bases have been using border collies for the past eight years to keep flocks away from airstrips. This and other tactics have reduced collisions by 75 percent – and saved an estimated $750 million – since 1984.

There are still going to be incidents like the pelican flock and the F-15, but thanks to Leshem’s work, coexistence between planes and birds over Israeli skies is now the norm.

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