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Avoiding the Strike
Position Report
by Dianne White
“It came out of nowhere.”
If you have every experienced a bird strike or know some- one who has, these words might sound familiar. I admit that I uttered them myself recently when a crow-sized bird smacked against my windscreen shortly after I rotated on takeoff. Thankfully, the size of the bird resulted in my plane winning the smack-down, but left carnage along the fuselage and on the horizontal stab. The plane experienced no damage, but the strike resulted in a very messy cleanup job.
Several years ago, my husband was descending into the Kansas City area and a perfectly formed “V” of Canada geese ap- peared in the upper left quadrant of his windscreen. He quickly maneuvered away from the feathered missiles, hoping to miss them. Then he heard a “THWAP.” The last goose in formation met an untimely death against the outboard leading edge of the left wing. Although what was left of the goose departed, a large, flat indentation was left behind. The aircraft’s controls and flying characteristics were normal, so he proceeded on to our home airport a short 10 miles away.
Both of our encounters resulted in limited damage, but my husband’s experience could have been much worse, even tragic should the goose had impacted the windscreen. The repairs were thousands of dollars and the aircraft was down several weeks, which was an inconvenience and a somewhat time-consuming process of working through the insurance settlement.
Bird strikes have been a problem for aviation since the begin- ning of powered flight. The first known bird strike occurred on Sept. 7, 1908 with Orville Wright at the controls. Orville report- edly was flying circles near Dayton, Ohio when he struck and killed a bird that was part of a flock he was chasing. The first bird strike that resulted in a human fatality occurred April 3, 1912. Lt. Cal Rodgers was killed near Long Beach, California, when a gull became entangled in the controls of his aircraft, sending Rodgers plunging to the ground.
Many populations of birds have increased markedly in the last few decades. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, efforts to re-establish the Canada goose in its native habitat in the United States have been too successful. The birds, which are no longer federally protected, have expanded their natural range southward, and many populations of these geese have lost their migratory habit and have become permanent, year- round residents in areas where they previously had visited only during winter. The result is they’ve become a nuisance for many cities and have been cited as a problem in more than 100 urban areas in 37 states. There are about 5 million breeding Canada geese in North America and the number is growing.
The double engine flameout of US Airways Flight 1549 fol- lowing an encounter of a Canada geese flock – which become known as the “Miracle on the Hudson” – is a prime example of a goose problem that isn’t going away anytime soon.
Likewise, the sandhill crane population in North America has increased fivefold since 1990, creating a threat to aviation. In April 2017, an Airbus 320 struck a migrating crane at 2,000 feet over the Potomac River in Virginia during departure from
4 • TWIN & TURBINE / April 2019