Reports show frequency of bird-airliner scrapes
Voluntary data from crews detail at least 26 since 2007. "Tip of the iceberg," an expert said.
WASHINGTON - Commercial-airline crews have reported at least 26 emergency landings, aborted takeoffs, or other hair-raising incidents due to collisions with birds since January 2007, according to an Associated Press review of reports filed voluntarily with NASA's confidential Aviation Safety Reporting System.
In some cases, the aircraft's brakes caught fire or cabins and cockpits filled with smoke and the stench of burning birds. Engines failed and fan blades broke. In one case, a bird strike left a 12-inch hole in a Boeing 757-200's wing.
The most dramatic emergency occurred Jan. 15 when a US Airways jet ditched safely into the Hudson River, apparently after a run-in with birds took out both of its engines.
To encourage reporting, the NASA database does not identify the crews, airlines and, in many cases, airports involved.
"That's only touching the tip of the iceberg," said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board. "Clearly, we don't have knowledge of the full width and breadth of this problem."
From 1990 to 2007, there were nearly 80,000 reports of birds striking nonmilitary aircraft, about one strike for every 10,000 flights, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and the Agriculture Department.
In some cases reported to the NASA database, crews said they could smell birds burning in the engines - "a toxic smell like burning toast [or] popcorn," wrote a flight attendant on an MD-80 that had just taken off in March. After the aircraft returned to the airport for an emergency landing, a bird strike from a previous landing was discovered.
Among other cases detailed in the NASA database:
In June 2007, a Boeing 757-200 at Denver International Airport had to abort a takeoff while going between 150 m.p.h. and 160 m.p.h. after birds the size of grapefruit flew into its path. Birds were sucked into both engines, the pilot said.
In July 2008, the pilot of a Boeing 737-300 in the midst of a 139-m.p.h. takeoff roll spotted a hawk with a four-foot wingspan on the runway. As the bird flew past the left side of the plane, the crew heard a "very loud bang," and there was engine surge. The pilot aborted the takeoff at great strain to the aircraft's brakes, which caught fire. Fire trucks doused the flames. No one was hurt.
In May 2008, a pilot about to fly a regional airliner reported that its windshield was "covered in blood, guts and feathers from an obvious bird strike." When he complained to the airline's maintenance department, he said, he was told the previous flight crew was responsible for reporting the incident.
Jim Hall, a former chairman of the NTSB, said the safety board had been warning for decades that birds "are a significant safety problem."
The board sent a series of bird-related safety recommendations to the FAA in 1999, including required reporting of bird strikes by airlines and the development of a radar system that can detect birds near airports.
A decade later, reporting is still voluntary. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said developing a reliable bird-detecting radar had proved difficult. Some of the systems tested by the agency picked up insects as well as birds.