Vulture shatters airplane windshield

[expat]

heater or no heater... those windows arent designed to stop 2 kilo plus birds.

Hitting a fully grown condor or swan (about 12 kilo maximum)with a 737 will probably end up in losing the windows too

That is true, they are designed to stop what is commonly found at airports under 500 feet, where 85% of bird strikes occur. The average bird that strikes an aircraft is in the sparrow and starling size, that being about 8oz believe it or not .......When you hit the internet though, you would think that with all the pictures available that it is only eagles, buzzards, condor and pterodactyls that are hitting aircraft

Matt

[OVERLORD_CHRIS]

On a 737, are they always on? Because our windows are only on as needed by push button. That's why I say it has not effected our windows like you say it does on the 737, we hit birds all the time in the Summer, with the defog off, that's why I don't see how this gives it flex, especial if it is not on 85% of the time to warm the window up during bird strikes.

Looks like I am not making myself clear, and yes on the 737 and A320 it is on all the time. Below are a couple of sites with window heating/bird strike threads.

And here it start at the beginning

7th poster starts the conversation on this subject

I hope this makes what I am trying to say a bit clearer :-/

Matt

I now see what you are saying, I read both forums, and the FAA report in the link. For what every reason I was thinking you meant that the elements gave rubber band like qualities to the window ,not that the heat provided the layers with flexibility. That does make sense.

Now with that I can ask: are military windows made of a higher grade material? since they fly higher then all the planes that every one was bringing up, such as 737's and A320's?

It seems like every one was using those 2 planes as the standard, because this happens alot on those planes. I know the C-141 & C-17 both had off switches, and a sensor to worn aircrew of ice build up. And the C-141 had bleed air for it's anti ice. but the C-5, C-17 & C-141 had crazy angles on there windows, compared to commercial planes, as to deflect stuff maybe.

[expat]

On a 737, are they always on? Because our windows are only on as needed by push button. That's why I say it has not effected our windows like you say it does on the 737, we hit birds all the time in the Summer, with the defog off, that's why I don't see how this gives it flex, especial if it is not on 85% of the time to warm the window up during bird strikes.

Looks like I am not making myself clear, and yes on the 737 and A320 it is on all the time. Below are a couple of sites with window heating/bird strike threads.

And here it start at the beginning

7th poster starts the conversation on this subject

I hope this makes what I am trying to say a bit clearer :-/

Matt

I now see what you are saying, I read both forums, and the FAA report in the link. For what every reason I was thinking you meant that the elements gave rubber band like qualities to the window ,not that the heat provided the layers with flexibility. That does make sense.

Now with that I can ask: are military windows made of a higher grade material? since they fly higher then all the planes that every one was bringing up, such as 737's and A320's?

It seems like every one was using those 2 planes as the standard, because this happens alot on those planes. I know the C-141 & C-17 both had off switches, and a sensor to worn aircrew of ice build up. And the C-141 had bleed air for it's anti ice. but the C-5, C-17 & C-141 had crazy angles on there windows, compared to commercial planes, as to deflect stuff maybe.

Good that we are on the same plane now As far as military and civilian goes, I would hazard a guess, that they would be on the same sort of standard for a couple of reasons. Producing a military (for example) 737 window and a civilian version, the cost factor of two production runs would be enormous and secondly, military aircraft are flying in the same bird strike window as civilian aircraft, that being on the whole below 500 feet. Civilian on approach as any military aircraft is and then thundering along (fighter) below 500 down to 100 feet. What is interesting, most modern bubble canopy's are plastic and not glass. The days of the armored windshild (F4 or Tornado) are well past. Look at any new-ish fighter and it is bubble from front to rear. My experience (although I left the RAF 10 years ago) is that these sort of windshields are deiced/frosted/fogged by blown air, so I am not sure window heat plays any roll here. If you Google there are a lot of pictures of military aircraft with holes in them C130 bird strike

[OVERLORD_CHRIS]

I would imagine that the military version of the Civilian planes would have the same windows. But one thing that was brought up in Myth Busters, was the size of the aircraft, and the operating heights, and speed they travel, the higher they fly, the more reinforce they must be.

C-40 should have the same restriction as a 737, as they are the same plane. But the E-4/VC-25 both have specially made windows that deflect as much radiation as they can due to there nature and mission, so you would not restrict any of those 2 panes to 10,000 feet below a certain speed making them a target.

But on the other hand a C-130 does not typically fly over 30,000 feet up doing over 320kts on a regular basis so it would not need a windshield that can with stand the pressure, like a C-5/17/141 would.