September 08, 2016
5 Ways Airline Pilots Mitigate Bird Strikes
So, you just watched Sully and you’re wondering what the likelihood is that the next time you’re on an airplane, your aircraft will encounter an engine-damaging bird strike. The answer: extremely low. And although in 2014 the FAA tracked 13,700 reported incidents of aircraft (including airliners, small planes, business jets, and helicopters) colliding with wildlife, 97 percent of which involved birds, commercial air travel remains the safest mode of transportation. In fact, an airline traveler, during his or her lifetime, is about 3,850 times more likely to be struck by lightning than they are to be a passenger on a commercial aircraft that is seriously damaged or destroyed by birds or other wildlife.
Below we’ll outline five ways pilots and the airline industry prepare for wildlife hazards.
1. Pilots fly prepared
More than any other factor, what ensures that airline safety remains at the highest possible level is the presence of a well-trained, highly qualified flight crew and the highly trained and qualified ground crew who support every flight. Pilots are constantly flying the aircraft, monitoring system operations and weather, and ensuring that the aircraft stays on the appropriate flight path. Although modern airliners have sophisticated automation technology, there is never a time when pilots are relieved of the responsibility or duty to ensure that each flight is completed with the highest degree of safety. The successful outcome of US Airways Flight 1549 serves as a strong testament to the need for highly qualified and trained pilots on each flight deck.
2. Pilots help steer aircraft design and operations
When birds enter an aircraft’s flightpath, the airplane’s engines and cockpit are the most vulnerable. The aviation industry has focused mitigation strategies on fortifying these areas while also developing measures and technologies to prevent wildlife strikes from occurring at and around airports. Today, manufacturers design aircraft to withstand an 8 lb. bird strike while flying at cruise speed at sea level, and engines to withstand the ingestion of 4 to 8 lb. birds at 200 knots while operating at 100 percent, all with input from airline pilots.
Timeline: ALPA’s Influence on FAA’s Standards for Bird Strikes
1992: The FAA assembled the Propulsion Harmonization Working Group as part of the Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC); ALPA participated, reevaluating the overall airworthiness of aircraft engines, including bird-ingestion limits.
1998: The FAA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking based on the ARAC’s recommendations; ALPA calls for improved bird-ingestion testing requirements, expanding this consideration to include flocks of birds.
2001: ALPA’s efforts pay off when the FAA established the Engine Harmonization Working Group to look at the effects of flocks of large birds (those individually weighing 2.5 to 8 lbs.).
2007: The FAA issues the final rule, adopting the group’s recommendations and two years later, Advisory Circular 33-76-1A outlined those policy changes.
3. Pilots advise airports
The FAA requires that each airport maintain a safe operating environment, including administering a wildlife hazard management plan to identify specific actions the airports will take, given its location and proximity to regional fauna, to mitigate the risk of birds and other wildlife hazards. Pilots play a pivotal role in that through ALPA’s Airport Liaison Program, where participating airline pilots (called airport safety liaisons) advise airports on everything from construction projects to ways to improve wildlife mitigation programs, including tactics such as pyrotechnics, bird distress-call recordings, air cannon blasts, and even bird dogs like Piper (below), who chases away birds and other wildlife at Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City, Mich.
K-9 Piper, wildlife control at Cherry Capital Airport. Photo courtesy K-airportk9.org.
4. Pilots build rapport with biologists
Capt. Alex Fotopoulous (Envoy Air), an airport safety liaison for New York’s LaGuardia Airport, played an instrumental role in monitoring a proposed municipal waste-transfer station near one of the airport’s runways, where ALPA aggressively lobbied for a full-time biologist to track the wildlife patterns (not covered by the FAA because it’s not on airport grounds). Stephan Beffre, a USDA wildlife biologist, now tracks all migratory bird patterns near the airport. Turns out, mitigation factors have kept the bird population in the area low.
5. Pilots report bird strikes
Reporting wildlife strikes is crucial to the continuing effort of bird strike prevention, and pilots obviously play a critical role in this event, tracked by the Smithsonian Institute’s Feather Identification Lab. According to its website, identifying the exact bird provides biologists with the baseline data needed to plan habitat management on airfields and build avoidance programs. It also enables engineers to design windscreens and engines that are more resilient to bird strike events.
The Smithsonian Feather Identification Lab team (l-r): Marcy Heacker, Carla Dove, Jim Whatton and Faridah Dahlan work to identify bird species. Photographer: Chip Clark
ALPA encourages pilots to fill out reports every time they have a wildlife strike, which contributes to the data collected for addressing the problem. ALPA also encourages pilots to report the presence of birds and other wildlife to air traffic controllers via radio transmissions to help with mitigation and strike-prevention efforts.
Attention pilots, please fill out the report (U.S. | Canada) in an event of a bird strike.
Tom Hanks on playing the role of Sully, and “other professionals who choose to go into a line of work not able to imagine doing anything else, and then at one point have all of their experience and expertise tested.”
“That’s a metaphor for life, you know? It’s not that fate put them in this place that made them heroes. It’s actually all of their experience, their particular persona and drive that got them to the place where they know what to do when the time comes,” Hanks says. “It’s the guy who will say, ‘No, unable—can’t land at LaGuardia or Teterboro. Follow me. Listen to what I’m saying. Brace, brace, brace.’”
–Parade Magazine
Fun-feathered Facts
- Orville Wright’s aircraft reportedly hit a bird midflight near Dayton, Ohio, in 1905.
Bird strike facts (source: Bird Strike Committee USA):
- The North American nonmigratory Canada goose population increased from 1 million birds in 1990 to over 3.5 million in 2013. About 1,470 Canada geese strikes with civil aircraft have been reported in the United States, 1990–2013; 42 percent of these strike events involved multiple birds.
- A 12 lb. Canada goose struck by a 150 mph aircraft generates the kinetic energy of a 1,000 lb. weight dropped from a height of 10 feet.
- The North American population of greater snow geese increased from about 90,000 in 1970 to over 1,000,000 in 2012.
- About 60 percent of bird strikes with civil aircraft occur during landing phases of flight (descent, approach, and landing roll); 37 percent occur during take-off run and climb; and the remainder occur during the en-route phase.
- About 92 percent of the bird strikes with commercial civil aircraft in the United States occur at or below 3,500 feet AGL. However, from 1990 to 2013, there were 21 strikes with commercial aircraft at heights from 20,000 to 31,300 feet AGL.
- Engines are the component most frequently damaged by bird strikes; engines account for 32 percent of all damaged aircraft components due to bird strikes.
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