The Growing Hazard of Bird Strike

I don’t know about you but flying is stressful enough without having to worry about the growing hazard of Bird Strike. I already worry about dealing with all of the normal crap associated with flying like crowded planes and interminably long security lines.

On really bad days I wonder if the man with the crazy eyes plans on trying to hijack my plane. And let me tell you Mr. Crazy Eyes, not only am I watching you, but I have a plane to take you down hard and fast.

And it is not the sort of hard and fast that makes your wife hate that little blue pill either. No, it is swift and severe, prompt and persuasive. You won’t like it all, Mr. Crazy Eyes. But I digress.

Now, I have to worry that a flock of birds might disable my plane and cause to hurtle through the sky wing over wing into a river or some farmers’ field. And I have to worry about this without the reassurance of the crocodile hunter or Marlin Perkins.

But because I like to share the good and the bad allow me to provide you with more insight as to what I am talking about.

But among the surprises was the fact that the incident appeared to be caused not by terror attack or mechanical failure, but by a wayward flock of geese. (See pictures of the plane crash in the Hudson River.)

While the National Transportation Board has yet to conduct a full investigation, authorities believe the geese were sucked into the plane’s two jet engines, causing immediate engine failure, shortly after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia airport. The aircraft, an Airbus A320, has engines designed to sustain damage from a bird weighting up to a four pounds, according to Todd Curtis, founder of Airsafe.com and an aviation safety expert. Canadian geese — the suspected culprits — weigh an average of 10 pounds. More than 219 people have been killed worldwide as a result of wildlife strikes since 1988, according to the volunteer organization Bird Strike Committee USA.