Bird Strikes Archives - Golf Hotel Whiskey

Bird strike myths and facts

The Hudson River incident a few years ago brought dramatic attention to the problem of aircraft bird strikes being all too common, but rarely deadly for aircraft. However, a group called the Bird Strike Committee USA has an article on its website entitled “The Top 10 Bird Strike Myths” and some of the following myths exposed may be somewhat startling.

Bird strikes cannot cause serious airline accidents.
Bird strikes are rare.
Bird strikes are no more of a problem today than 20 or 30 years ago.
Large aircraft are built to withstand all bird strikes.
If a bird flies into an engine during takeoff and the engine quits, the airplane will crash.
Nothing can be done to keep birds away from airports.
It is illegal to kill birds just to protect aircraft.
If birds are a problem at an airport, killing them all would eliminate the problem.
Except for the very rare accident, bird strikes are only a nuisance to airline operators.
Bird strikes are a concern only to those who fly.
Bonus Myth: Bird strikes never occur at high altitudes.

Obviously the answers are the opposite of the above statements or myths and the Bird Strike Committee USA’s article goes into considerable detail listing all of the facts about bird strikes for each one. The Bird Strike Committee USA’s main website also points out that annual bird and other wildlife strikes to aircraft cause well over $600 million in damage to US civil and military aviation and that over 219 people have been killed worldwide since 1988 (click here to see their list of bird strike incidents starting with Orville Wright).

It should be mentioned that the Bird Strike Committee USA was formed in 1991 to address bird strike issues and their next annual meeting is scheduled for August in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Such meetings are usually spread out over 3 1/2 days and include four parts:

Practical classroom and field training sessions on wildlife control at airports which cover both civil and military aviation.
The presentation of technical papers and posters.
Exhibits and demonstrations with vendors.
A field trip which generally covers the host airport or a wildlife management area to observe management programs and habitat issues related to wildlife and aviation safety.

If you are an airport official in the UK and can’t attend one of these annual meetings, the Bird Strike Committee USA’s website has an Understanding and Reducing Bird Hazards to Aircraft page and a Best Management Practices For Airport Wildlife Control paper listing some of the steps you can take to reduce wildlife dangers at or around airports.

Mid-air bat strike leaves a pilot bleeding (and getting rabies shots)

A North Queensland crop dusting pilot named Josh Liddle has recounted a bizarre incident where a bat smashed through his aircraft windshield, leaving lots of “blood and guts” all over the place that he thought may have belonged to him:

Apparently, Josh was coming back from a spray run over sugar cane crops and he made the mistake of flying through the middle of a colony of bats as it was just after dark when they head out to hunt.

As bad as having a bat smash through a windshield and hit you in the face can be, it could be worst as bats can carry rabies and Josh was covered in bat blood and guts (it looked like a “homicide scene…”). In fact and since its discover in 1994, lyssavirus, a close relative of the rabies virus, has killed the only two Queenslanders who became infected with it as both suffered influenza-like symptoms before slipping into a coma from which they did not awake from. So it was six needles in the face and the chest, one in the arm and two in the bum for Josh as a precaution.

Josh also told the Brisbane Times that the bat colony is massive and it blackens the sky out when they depart. Moreover:

‘‘Their flight path is straight over the local airport. We can’t have this happening too often. We’ve got limited hours [in which] we can do our jobs and they’re during the early morning and late afternoon and that’s when the bats do their thing.’’

For that reason, he would like to see the bats moved on though methods previously endorsed by Premier Campbell Newman that include smoke bombs, noise and helicopters rather than a culling efforts. However, the Queensland Conservation Council has warned that bats are likely to have higher virus loads when stressed by harassment or destruction of their feeding and roost sites. Not to mention, they might take up residence some place else where they aren’t going to be any more welcomed.

Aussie pilot has a close encounter with an Emu

Sylvia, the blogger behind the Fear of Landing blog had recently posted an interesting video of a near-miss involving an aircraft landing in Australia and an Emu. However, she went a step further and contacted the pilot in the incident to find out his side of the story about what happened.

According to the pilot, he takes a yearly trip up to a 200,000 acre farm (that’s right – the farm is 809 square kilometers and takes 2.5 hours to drive across) that raises cattle and has a landing trip. Normally he calls ahead to have someone shoo away the wildlife (e.g. wild pigs, cattle etc.) and this time around someone came out to shoot a wild pig on the runway.

However, and as he landed, an emu that was:

…was sitting on the side unseen in the bushes and we obviously startled it, and it bolted from cover in front. One of my passengers yelled out, and I jumped on the brakes, hard, and washed off about 40 knots in about 3 seconds! The emu went in front of us and lost his footing on the loose dust, just as the wing passed harmlessly over him! Cue much celebration!

That’s one lucky bird and one lucky pilot and aircraft as we can only imagine what kind of damage a giant flightless bird could have done to a small aircraft!

A near miss involving a rabbit

While bird strike incidents have been well reported and are a well known hazard faced by aircraft, David Cenciotti has recently noted another near miss that involved a rabbit on the runway during a recent airshow held in Rivolto to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Frecce Tricolori. Moreover, he posted a picture taken by Giovanni Maduli that showed the first section of five Alenia Aermacchi MB.339A/PANs of the Pattuglia Acrobatica Nazionale (Italian Aerobatic Team) taking off when a rather large rabbit scampered across the runway near the aircraft flown by the leader of the Frecce Tricolori.

Luckily, the rabbit was fast enough to avoid the aircraft, but the picture does serve pilots as a reminder of the hazards posed by wildlife on the ground during ground operations. And as we (and the Bangalore Aviation blog) noted back in July of 2009, its not just rabbits that you need to watch out for:

On July 17th, a Kingfisher Airlines plane was landing in Nagpur when three wild pigs ran out onto the runway and one of them made contact with the aircraft which resulted in no damage. The incident is a reminder of another incident that occurred on March 28, 2008 in Bangalore where a dog strike broke the nose wheel off of a Kingfisher Aircraft resulting in a blocked runway and a four hour shutdown of the airport.

If only pigs or dogs could run as fast as rabbits!

Bizarre turkey vulture strikes helicopter video

Here is a really bizarre story and video that was first mentioned on the Cirrus Owners & Pilots Association (COPA) blog and involved a turkey vulture striking a helicopter in Miami just before the Superbowl. According to the pilot, he saw the turkey vulture outside the helicopter and next thing he knew, the bird was sitting on his lap after leaving a big hole in the windshield! Luckily, the pilot had kept his hands on the controls and safely landed the helicopter – despite the 80 mile an hour winds blowing through the windshield hole. However, the most amazing and perhaps bizarre part of the story was the fact that the turkey vulture was merely dazed and still managed to fly off after the helicopter landed. Now that is one lucky pilot and an even more lucky (and perhaps hard headed) bird!

A visualization of bird strike data

Bird strikes have been in the news lately and especially after the Hudson River incident earlier this year along with a controversial proposal by the USA’s FAA to keep data about bird strikes confidential. However and as we have noted in the past, bird strikes are fairly common but are rarely deadly (that is, for the aircraft and the passengers).

To help further put things in perspective, Brett, who is the blogger behind the popular Cranky Flier blog, has recently posted an exclusive preview of Tableau Software’s interactive visualization of FAA bird strike data. The interactive display clearly shows that bird strikes rarely do damage but the reporting of bird strikes (and we emphasis the reporting of) is clearly on the rise. However, Brett also notes that:

A whopping total of .06% of bird strikes destroyed the airplane. That’s 11 airplanes out of the 20,000 that have hit birds since 2005. (And this only goes through 2008, so it doesn’t include the ditching in the Hudson.) You’ll notice that props receive damage more often than jets

In other words, bird strikes are a threat but with all things considered (i.e. the weather, other air traffic etc.), they remain a fairly small threat to worry about.

Should you be curious about the actual data, the interactive display is a fairly handy and useful tool to help put things in perspective and hopefully it will help to allay any fears among the general public concerning the actual risk from such a strike.