David Cenciotti has posted some pictures on his blog revealing the damage a bird strike did to the windshield of an Airbus 321. Thankfully only a windshield and not an engine was involved and the plane was able to land safely.
Meanwhile, across the pond, the FAA is proposing to keep data on bird strikes confidential – arguing that 
some carriers and airports would stop reporting such incidents for fear that the general public might misinterpret the data given the shear number of incidents reported. Apparently, their database contains records of 100,000 reported incidents since 1990 – a surprisingly high statistic (and this is just in one country) that does show the magnitude of the problem facing aviation (and even this number is thought to be fairly low since many bird strike incidents are not reported).
The public has until April 20 to comment on the proposal and media groups along with aviation bloggers are already up in arms about the proposed change to secrecy.
How the public will view and interpret the data and whether airports and carriers can be held legally liable for such incidents remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the fact remains that statistically speaking and despite the unavoidable risk from bird strikes, flying still remains one of the safest forms of transportation.
Related posts:
{ 1 trackback }