When I was training for my private certificate, my CFI told me that he had experienced 2 serious bird strikes, and both occurred at night. The first one was in a Cherokee. The bird hit the leading edge of the left wing and pushed the leading edge all the way to the spar! It yawed the plane so hard that at first he thought they midaired with another aircraft.

The second one was in a twin – a Navajo, I think. The bird came through the co-pilot’s windshield, sending plexiglas all over his friend’s face. The remains of the bird ended up all over the back of the cabin. I believe this one was at 12,000 feet!

My father had a very unique occurrence while doing pipeline patrol in a Cessna 182 about 25 years ago. Bird strikes were not terribly uncommon for patrol pilots because they rarely flew much more than 500 agl. Anyway, one day a bird went THROUGH the propeller without hitting a blade! The air current took the bird over the windshield WITHOUT hitting it! Then the bird missed the tail! Dad looked back and saw the bird still flying!

Finally, one thing to remember. If you’re coming up on a bird, remember that they can dive faster than they can climb. While flying my brother-in-law’s Luscombe one day at about 1500agl, we came up on a hawk. It was slightly higher than us, so we decided to fly under him. Just before we got to him, he dove on us! We had to push pretty hard to stay under him, and only missed him by a few feet. Next time, I’ll just climb above him…

Doc: “You’re supposed to be able to execute every aerobatic maneuver in the book with a 6g limit.”
Brad Randolph: “Sure, if I execute every maneuver perfectly…and sprout feathers in the tail.”
- from the movie “Cloud Dancer” starring David Carradine

It turned out to be a Sand Hill Crane which had been sleeping on the runway because the concrete was relatively warm on that cool morning. The screaming roar of the Lear woke it just in time to raise it’s head and look around before becoming one with the right main gear door, which promptly departed the airplane at the piano hinge, putting a golf ball sized dent in the flap behind it. The gear door and remains of the bird were found on the runway by our maintenance shop personnel. No other damage was done to the airplane, but the part alone cost over $5,000 to replace not including the several hours of labor required to hand fit the new piece to the airplane.

* The values of V1 and Vr in the Lear 23 were usually within 5 knots, which passed faster than you can say “V1Rotate”, in fact the call was often “V1RotateV2″ – I loved that little rocket.

Appreciate your comments …..

In your recent article about “The bird always loses but…”, you ask how it was determined that only about 20% of bird strikes are reported.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (which manages the National Wildlife Strike Database for the FAA) conducted a study in 2005 to obtain an estimate of the percentage of bird and other wildlife strikes involving civil aircraft reported to the FAA. The methodology and findings are summarized as follows: (taken from Cleary, E. C., R. A. Dolbeer, and S. E. Wright. 2005. Wildlife strikes to civil aircraft in the United States, 1990-2004. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Office of Airport Safety and Standards, Serial Report No. 11, Washington, DC. 53 pages).

“WILDLIFE STRIKES WITH CIVIL AIRCRAFT REPORTED TO FAA
Reporting of wildlife strikes with civil aircraft is voluntary but strongly encouraged by the FAA (Advisory Circular 150/5200-32A,
Reporting Wildlife Aircraft Strikes [22 December 2004]). An initial analysis of independent strike data from an eastern USA airport in 1994 indicated that less than 20 percent of strikes were actually reported to the FAA for inclusion in the national database (Dolbeer et al. 1995).

To obtain an improved estimate of the percent of strikes that are unreported, we obtained 14 sets of wildlife strike data maintained by three airlines and three airports for various years (1991–2004). Only 489 (10.7 percent) of the 4,561 strikes recorded in these databases had been reported to the FAA for inclusion in the National Wildlife Strike Database (Table 17). The National Wildlife Strike Database contained an additional 591 strike reports for the relevant time periods unknown to the airlines or airports, making a total of 5,152 known strike events in the combined databases. If we assume that these 5,152 known strike events in the combined databases represented all strikes that occurred for those airlines and airports during those time periods, then the National Wildlife Strike Database contained 1,080 (21.0 percent) of the total strikes. Because it is highly probable that additional strike events occurred that were not recorded in either the national or local databases, the percent of strikes reported to the FAA probably fell somewhere between 10.7 and 21.0 percent.”

These findings refer to commercial aviation at Part 139-certificated airports. A 2008 USDA study found that reporting rates for GA aircraft at GA airports was likely less than 5%. These findings (taken from Dolbeer, R. A., M. J. Begier, and S. E. Wright. 2008. Animal ambush: the challenge of managing wildlife hazards at general aviation airports. Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Corporate Aviation Safety Seminar, 30 April-1 May 2008, Palm Harbor, Florida. Flight Safety Foundation, Alexandria, Virginia, USA) are summarized as follows:

“An analysis of reported strikes and strike rates per 100,000 movements in 2006 for a random sample of airports indicated that Part 139-certificated airports averaged about 9 times the reported strike rate as GA airports. As noted above, previous analyses indicated that less than 20% of strikes were reported at certificated airports (Wright and Dolbeer 2005). If we assume that actual strike rates are similar at certificated and GA airports, it is likely that less than 5% of wildlife strikes at GA airports are reported.”

The overall conclusion from these studies is that it is difficult to measure the magnitude of the wildlife problem at Part 139 and GA airports because reporting of strikes is so limited (5% to 20%) under a voluntary reporting system. In 1999, the NTSB recommended to the FAA that strike reporting be mandatory.

Sandra Wright, FAA Wildlife Strike Database Manager
Richard Dolbeer, USDA, Retired

I think what we are seeing is that these are largely random, low probability and occasionally, high consequence events. Easier to mitigate around airports but not stop.

Another misconception is that birds don’t fly IMC – they do and I’ve seen it but they don’t fly IFR, if you get the distinction.

Thanks for joining in……Bruce

Departing Amsterdam on a foggy morning in a B747-200 freighter we hit a flock of geese at about 150 ft. On arrival in Milan Malpensa, we found the radome to have major cracks and damage but, of more interest, we found a one metre long bloodly streak down the outside of #4 engine !

This was just one of many birdstrikes I have had in my 17,000 hours of flying. Birds can get you at surprisingly high altitudes too: we sucked a large hawk-type bird into the #2 engine on an HS Trident 2 aircraft at 11,000 ft on descent into Nicosia one afternoon: it totally destroyed the engine…

There was an interesting article in the US AOPA magazine a while back about a guy who experienced a bird strike: his windscreen was totally destroyed and he was very lucky to be able to land with glass fragments from his (glass) glasses in his eyes. Since reading that article, I don’t use (glass) glasses while flying anymore: I wear a pair of those hammer-proof, plastic, glasses designed for use in workshops. I have those little stick-on magnifying lenses to convert them in optical glasses: I have a clear pair and a sunglasses version to suit any situation.

The medics can fix up just about anything you care to break on your body except the good old “Mark One” eyeball so we better look after them…