Not so silent wings: Tina Turner songs used to scare birds off the runway at Staverton airport
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Your support makes all the difference.With over 50 years in the music business Anna Mae Bullock, or Tina Turner as she's known to most of us, has accolades, awards and hits aplenty; and now airport chiefs at Staverton, near Gloucester have handed her another.
In an effort to keep birds away from their runway, airport bosses have taken to blasting out Turner's hits at high-volume from a van that drives around the grounds.
Airport chiefs have been using a range of creative approaches to ridding the airport of birds, including using Roman candle fireworks, swinging a bin liner around their heads (to supposedly imitate a bird of prey) and sending out distress calls.
Head of Operations at the airport Darren Lewington told the www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk website: “Normally we use the speakers on the top of the vehicle we use to drive around the airport to play bird distress calls.
“But when our bird distress noises weren't working properly, they turned the tape player on, and that day it was Tina Turner who scared the birds away.”
Gloucestershire Airport's operations team say that gulls and crows are their biggest problem, with around 20,000 gulls moving through the Severn Valley every day.
The birds can present a serious risk to flights taking off and landing at the council-owned airport.
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