Behind the planes that take off and land all the time at the 17 airports in aena brazil, there are professionals who work daily to ensure the success of each operation. Among them are biologists, whose mission is to prevent plane collisions with animals, ensuring the safety of operations and everyone on board. In 2020, Aena began this Fauna Risk Management work at the airports it manages in the Northeast, and today it is reaping consistent results.
From 2022 to 2023, the concessionaire reduced the rate of collisions with animals by 23,64% at the first aerodromes it took over in Brazil: Aracaju, in Sergipe; João Pessoa and Campina Grande, in Paraíba; Juazeiro do Norte, in Ceará; Maceió, in Alagoas; and Recife, in Pernambuco. In this equipment, 19,44 collisions were recorded for every 10 thousand movements last year, while there were 25,46 in 2022. In absolute numbers, there were 277 collisions in 2023 compared to 344 in 2022. From the time Aena's work began until the end Last year, 1.105 collisions were recorded at the six airports in the Northeast.
The biggest reduction was observed at Aracaju aerodrome, where the number fell from 44,65 for every 10 thousand movements, in 2022, to 25,09, in 2023. “The real reduction in the risk of collisions is directly related to the culture of notifications . After four years of work at airports in the Northeast, with continuous training, awareness-raising actions on the importance of registration and the presence of trained professionals to mitigate this risk, we managed to achieve a real reduction in our collision rates”, celebrates Diógenes Barbosa Araújo, Corporate Environmental Coordinator at Aena Brasil.
In the block of 11 airports that the concessionaire acquired in 2022, the work is recent: it began shortly after taking over, in the last four months of 2023.
ROUTINES
Airplane collisions with animals occur all over the world every day. In Brazil, 26,5 cases were reported between 2011 and 2022, according to the 2022 Fauna Risk Yearbook, from the Aeronautical Accident Investigation and Prevention Center (Cenipa), an agency of the Aeronautics Command. In 2022 alone, there were 3.484 collisions, 93,65% of which involved birds. Among the 60% of occurrences with species identified that year, two of the most common were with birds: the lapwing (19%) and the caracará (8,24%). The third was with the bat (3,67%).
The survey also shows that most collisions happen during the day, when there are more flights, and especially during the taxiing and landing phases. “Zero collision is impossible. As long as we have landings and takeoffs, we will have collisions. What we need to do is ensure that these collisions are not significant, that neither the aircraft nor the engers suffer damage, and that the runway does not become imable”, explains Diógenes.
To reduce the risk, the work of Aena's teams of biologists is meticulous. It involves a detailed understanding of the environment in which the airport is located and a series of routine activities. Among them, daily inspections of the operational area to identify signs of the presence of animals in the surrounding area.
To deal with birds, which represent almost all occurrences, biologists use different scaring techniques, such as cracking whips, fireworks, sirens, horns and megaphones. Other techniques include the use of a gas cannon, which generates a high-intensity explosion sound, and the installation of effigies at strategic points, models that reproduce the silhouette of a predatory bird.
It is also common for birds of prey trained to scare away or capture other species to be inserted into the airport site area, a technique called falconry. One of Aena's airports that uses this procedure a lot is Recife. “Each airport is in a different area and there are peculiarities in the techniques used so that animals do not remain on the airport site. We work to ensure that they do not enter the operational area. The fewer animals we have at airports, the fewer risks we will have for operations”, explains Diógenes.
In addition to inspections in the operational area, biologists also monitor the airport security area, which includes a 20 km radius from the aerodrome. It is in this area where they identify attractive situations for fauna, which may be natural or the result of human intervention, such as landfills, for example. Based on this mapping, the airport alerts the Public Authorities to eliminate inappropriate situations. “We have full-time biologists at all airports in the Northeast and at six aerodromes in the block of 11 that we recently started managing. In the others, we work in a rotating manner. This is a milestone for us, because not all concessionaires work with biologists in the field all the time”, celebrates Diógenes.
It is also up to biologists to collect information from accidents for notification at Cenipa. “A collision with a bat is different from a collision with a vulture. So everything needs to be checked and reported. The more reports we have, the more data we have to work with. Therefore, collision numbers always need to be seen in context. An airport with fewer collisions, for example, can only mean that underreporting is high”, explains Diógenes Araújo. All Fauna Risk Management work follows international guidelines, Brazilian civil aviation regulations and the country's environmental legislation.
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