Laugh or mourn, birds keep hitting US aircraft

It's a jungle out there for US pilots as they battle laughing gulls, mourning doves and even bats for ever-shrinking airspace, according to new data.

Detailed figures from the Federal Aviation Authority show a doubling in collisions with wildlife over the last decade, with 8,758 between January and November last year. Gulls and other seabirds most frequently strike, followed by doves and pigeons, starlings, then raptors and waterfoul, according to statistics.

But as both airline fleets and bird flocks expand, pilots face an extraordinary array of wildlife through their windscreens, including eagles, bats, kestrels, cuckoos, egrets, snow geese, ducks - and, on the ground, even alligators.

The vast majority of wildlife collisions cause only minor harm to aircraft. Last year, 98 accidents resulted in serious damage and the trend over the years has been for that proportion to diminish, the data shows.

However, the crash landing of a US Airways Airbus in New York's Hudson River this January, after geese knocked out both engines, served as a chilling reminder of the threat. The pilot was able to land safely but only after flying the packed airliner with no power. The deadliest tragedies occurred in 1960, when a flock of starlings brought down a civilian plane in Massachusetts killing 62 people, and in 1996, when 34 people died in a military aircraft in the Netherlands.

Today the worst affected airports include John F. Kennedy in New York, with 1,444 collisions between 1998-2008 and Dallas, Texas, with 1,702. Chicago saw 1,567 incidents during the same period, Los Angeles 720, and Atlanta 539. According to the data base on http://wildlife.pr.erau.edu/public/index.html , planes are also under attack from the ground.

Skunks, white-tailed deer, dogs, rabbits, and turtles have been involved in strikes. In Florida, there were no less than 14 collisions with alligators between 1994 and 2005.

The FAA said in a report last year that "civil and military aviation communities widely recognise that the threat to human health and safety from aircraft collisions with wildlife is increasing."

Part of that is because of flourishing populations in the US of large birds such as geese, turkeys and cormorants. The other main reason is the substantial increase in air traffic.

About 310 million passengers flew in 1980 and 749 million in 2007, the FAA says. Modernisation of aircraft is also playing an unexpected role. Birds have greater trouble hearing today's quieter aircraft, which typically use two, not three or four engines.