Those who work in the specialized field of birdstrike avoidance have spoken out for years about the rising hazard of airplanes hitting birds. âThe numbers keep going up, and the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] is just clueless,â Paul Eschenfelder, a veteran pilot for a major international airline, told me late last year. âThe airline industry doesnât want to get involved because theyâre afraid they might have to spend money. Nobody will get involved until we have a big catastrophe.â
The big catastrophe nearly came on January 15, 2009.
About 90 seconds after takeoff from New Yorkâs LaGuardia Airport, US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of Canada geese, disabling both engines. âIt was the worst sickening, pit-of-your-stomach, falling-through-the-floor feeling Iâve ever felt in my life,â Captain Chesley Sullenberger would later tell CBSâsÌę60 Minutes. The plane didnât have enough altitude to glide back to LaGuardia, so Sullenberger executed an emergency water landing on the Hudson River. He and the crew helped all 155 people on board get off safely.
While the accident brought the dangers of birdstrikes to the nationâs attention, experts have long been investigating the most effective ways to curtail such collisions. Theyâve discovered it requires an ornithologistâs knowledge of bird behavior, high-tech radar equipment, labor-intensive ground observation, and some old-fashioned wildlife detective work.
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On a morning last DecemberÌęin Tulsa, members of the 138th Fighter Wing of the Oklahoma Air National Guard filtered into a conference room for a 9 a.m. presentation. The fighter pilots wore green flight suits. Shoulder patches identified them as members of the Tulsa Vipers F-16 squadron recently returned from Iraq. They had the look of Top Guns expecting to endure a time waster taught by a civilian. A civilian bird guy.
The presenter that morning was Russ DeFusco, a leading authority on birdstrikes. His job is to keep gulls, starlings, and turkey vultures from getting sucked into the Vipersâ engines. To a fighter pilot just back from combat, though, Canada geese may be low on the list of concerns. âThese guys are worried about dodging bullets, not birds,â DeFusco told me, âso Iâve got to get their attention in a hurry.â
To do that, he told this story.
In July 1995 DeFusco gave a similar briefing to officials at Elmendorf Air Force Base outside Anchorage, Alaska. Elmendorf had a notorious Canada geese problem. Migrating flocks liked to rest and feed on the grass surrounding the baseâs runways.Ìę âYouâve got to watch the runway grass carefully, and do everything in your power to harass that first migrating bird away from here,â DeFusco told Elmendorf officials. âIf he lands and feeds, that sends a signal to the rest of the flock. One bird will draw dozens and then hundreds of others.â
When DeFusco delivered a plan for an aggressive bird management program, the officials put a few suggestions into action but ignored most of the recommendations. Two months later, on September 22, an Air Force AWACS communication plane struck 25 Canada geese during takeoff. The birds knocked out the two left engines, sending the plane out of control. It crashed in heavy woods outside of Anchorage, destroying the plane and killing all 24 crew members aboard.
If the pilots in Tulsa thought their nimble fighter jets made them less vulnerable, DeFusco told them, they should think again. âThe Air Force has lost more F-16s to birdstrikes than any other aircraft,â he said. Twenty-two years ago DeFusco was hired to investigate an F-4 fighter destroyed by a griffon vulture in Spain. âIt turned out the bird crashed straight through the canopy and decapitated the pilot. The bird goo blinded the co-pilot, who went down with the ship. When they found the co-pilotâs body his hand was still gripping the stick.â
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Birds collide with airplanes,Ìęon average, about 20 times a day around the United States. The results of these midair meetings are fairly predictable. The birds end up as âsnarge,â the industry term for the gooey remains. Commercial jets usually escape with little damage. But not always. A bird can crumple an airplaneâs nose cone, punch a hole in a wing, disable the ground steering, or destroy an engine. âMost times they just bounce off, and you donât even know youâve hit a bird,â says Eschenfelder, a member of Bird Strike Committee USA, a group of aviation industry officials who track the issue. âBut a jet engine canât just swallow those things and keep going. Itâs a real hazard, and itâs happening every day.â
And itâs getting worse. The airline industry doesnât publicize itâfor obvious reasonsâbut more birds are hitting more airplanes every year. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FAA, which monitor wildlife hazards to aviation, there were 1,759 reported birdstrikes to civil aircraft in 1990. In 2007 there were 7,666âa fourfold increase. Some of that can be attributed to better reporting by pilots and mechanics, although the FAA estimates that only 20 percent of all strikes are reported. Another reason for the increase might be the swelling number of flights; commercial air traffic has increased by 1.8 percent a year since 1980, and there were more than 28 million flights in 2007. The FAA estimates that number will continue growing by 2 percent a year and will reach 36 million flights by 2020. Another key indicator is a statistic known as strikes per 10,000 movements of aircraft. Itâs like the industryâs birdstrike batting average. In 1990 it was 0.53, or one strike for every 20,000 flights. By 2007 it had tripled, to 1.75.
Despite the rising incidence and the example of US Airways 1549, the issue remains a low priority for commercial airlines and the FAA. The Air Force has long made birdstrike reporting mandatory. For civil aircraft under FAA jurisdiction, though, reporting remains voluntary. âWeâre always looking at ways to improve our wildlife mitigation efforts,â says FAA spokesperson Hank Price. But in the weeks following the US Airways crash, the agency took no action to review its existing avoidance procedures. âThe shame of it is, this is something we can have some control over,â says Eschenfelder.
While the continued decline of songbirds and at-risk species is well known, populations of gulls and turkey vulturesâlarge birds capable of inflicting a lot of damage to an airplaneâhave risen steadily, and grassy fields and retention ponds surrounding airports are attractive feeding and resting grounds for Canada geese. âThere are a lot more big birds than there were 40 years ago, and theyâre hitting aircraft with greater frequency,â Steve Predmore, chief safety officer of JetBlue Airways, told a gathering of industry experts in 2006. âBirdstrikes are a real threat,â he said, with no silver bullet solution.
There may be no silver bullet, but the nationâs pilots and air travelers do have a Lone Ranger. DeFusco realized his calling in the early 1980s when, as an Air Force Academy lieutenant, he hit a bird on his second solo flight. As flames shot out his engine, DeFusco landed the plane and walked away. Because of the high speed, pilots usually see just a flash before impact, if they see anything at all. But DeFusco was a lifelong birder. âIt was a Mississippi kite,â he recalls.
DeFusco worked on the Air Forceâs BASH (Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard) team in the late 1980s and 1990s, developing the first radar-based system for bird avoidance before leaving to become an independent consultant. Today he works out of a home office in Colorado Springs, but heâs in such demand that he travels three days a week. âAnybody who has this problem eventually finds me,â DeFusco says. âAnd right now a lot of people are finding me.â
Solving humanâbird conflicts in a high-risk environment like airports involves a blend of cutting-edge surveillance and traditional birding knowledge. Major airports have employed wildlife managers since the 1970s, and yet the number of birdstrikes continues to rise. Now, DeFusco believes, the aviation industry needs to stop thinking of birds as nuisances and start thinking of them as a natural phenomenonâlike the weather. âWeâre integrating bird migration patterns and historical data into models that will let us predict when and where birds will be concentrated,â he says. âWhere we are with birds today is something like where we were with weather forecasting 50 years ago.â
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At work DeFusco combinesÌęa detectiveâs gumshoe sleuthing with a lobbyistâs persuasive diplomacy. The Tulsa job was part of a long-term contract with the Air National Guard. After the 1995 crash at Elmendorf, military officials demanded new birdstrike avoidance plans at each of the nationâs 88 Air National Guard bases. DeFusco has been creating those plans since 2001âafter Tulsa heâd have only four more to go.
Like a private eye looking for clues, DeFusco walked the grounds, climbed into the air traffic control tower, chatted up the maintenance crew, and poked around corners in the F-16 hangar. He sought out any natural or built feature that would attract a bird or let deer or coyotes slip through the perimeter fence. (Airplanes hit about 150 mammals, mostly deer, on American runways every year.)
âI often start with the grass,â DeFusco told Lt. Col. Jimmy Nichols as they stood at the edge of the Tulsa Airport perimeter road. âYour grass here is in nice shape, not a lot of weeds, which is good. Except for Canada geese, grass is indigestible to most wildlife. The thing is, right now itâs cut too low. You want it seven to fourteen inches high. If grass grows above a birdâs eye height, you obscure their interflock communication system and keep them from seeing predators. It makes âem real nervous.â
Nichols made a note of it. As the 138th Fighter Wingâs safety officer, heâs responsible for keeping birds out of his pilotsâ airspace. And as a fighter pilot with nearly 20 yearsâ experience, he wants nothing to do with birdstrikes. âI once hit a turkey vulture on a low-level flight outside Phoenix,â he said. âThe bird guts and feathers splattered inside the cockpit. The smellâoh, man. Thatâs nothing I want to experience again.â
DeFusco nodded in sympathy. âGulls are the birds most often struck by commercial airliners, but turkey vultures are the number one species for significant mishaps,â he said. âWeâve lost more military aircraft to them than any other bird.â A combination of factors is at work. Theyâre big birdsâeach weighs about four pounds. There are a lot of them, and they hang out in circular soaring patterns at 2,500 feet. âTheyâve got a locking mechanism in their wings, so theyâre actually conserving energy soaring up there,â said DeFusco. âAnd theyâve got no airborne predators, so they havenât developed an evasive response. When an aircraft comes at a red-tailed hawk, the hawk will dive. The turkey vulture doesnât know enough to get out of the way.â
Some oak trees caught DeFuscoâs eye. Airport officials know that trees provide birds with shelter and food, but the Tulsa mayor likes them. DeFusco suggested pruning to let the wind pass through. âBirds roost there for the thermal cover,â he said. âIf you take that away, theyâll look for other trees away from the runway. You lose the birds, the mayor keeps his trees.â
DeFusco stepped inside a hangar, where mechanics were busy stripping down the nose of an F-16. Some bird droppings on the floor caught his eye. âThatâs from our local red-tail,â one of the mechanics told him.
Allowing red-tailed hawks to reside at airports is a relatively new and still controversial strategy. In theory, the predatory birds discourage other birds from coming into the area. The data seem to confirm it. Officials at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, for instance, have allowed six pairs of red-tails to nest nearby since 2001. âThe resident hawks are airport savvy,â says Steve Osmek, Sea-Tacâs wildlife program manager. âThe birds that tend to get struck are juveniles and migrantsâthe young and the dumb.â The strategy isnât without risk. If a resident hawk caused a mishap, it could be tough to explain in a sound bite why airport officials encouraged their presence.
DeFusco had a simpler solution. âThe hawkâs okay,â he told the hangar crew, âbut really, the best thing you can do is close the big hangar doors a half-hour before sunrise and a half-hour before sunset, when smaller birds are coming home to roost.âÌę
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Habitat managementâgrass,Ìętrees, hangar doorsâis the low-tech part of DeFuscoâs job, and itâs an easy sell to airport officials. The high-tech part is tougher. Itâs one thing to cut the grass higher. Itâs another thing entirely to convince air traffic controllers to start thinking of birds like they think of weather.
The concept, DeFusco explains, goes back to the National Weather Serviceâs nationwide rollout of Doppler weather radar in the 1990s. The NEXRAD systemâTV weathercasters use it for âyour Doppler radar forecast!ââis so sensitive that it picks up flying birds, which are noise in the signal for meteorologists. âTheir trash was our treasure,â says DeFusco. âWe could remove the weather from the signal, and what remained was birds. It was a huge breakthrough.â
Using data from National ĂÛèÖAPPâs Christmas Bird Count, the U.S. Geological Surveyâs Breeding Bird Survey, and historical birdstrike records, the Air Force team created a database of bird traffic around the country. Real-time Doppler radar provided a secondary layer of information about current bird activity in the area. At the Air Forceâs Avian Hazard Advisory System (AHAS), pilots combine the two systems to determine the âbird weatherâ along their route. âFrom a pilotâs perspective,â says DeFusco, âthe AHAS system is a measure of the amount of meat in the air in front of your airplane.â
Among birders, for instance, the Skagit Valley north of Seattle is a well-known wintering ground for snow geese, trumpeter swans, and bald eaglesâbig birds that can bring down a small plane. Pilots may know nothing about the valleyâs birding reputation, but a glance at the AHAS site lets them know the areaâs birdstrike risk level is severe during late December.
Pilots, airfield managers, and air traffic controllers donât universally embrace the AHAS system, mainly because it represents one more piece of data theyâve got to think about. DeFusco was sensitive to the problem. âThis isnât meant to keep you from flying,â he assured the F-16 pilots in Tulsa. âItâs like a weather conditionâif you know a storm is coming in, that wonât necessarily ground you, but you might alter your route to avoid it.â
The military uses the AHAS system, but civilian airport officials have been slower to adopt it. âItâs a challenge Russ and I have talked about for years,â says Ron Merritt, president of DeTect, a company that specializes in aviation radar systems. âHow do you get bird information to flight crews? Thereâs no bird guy in the [air traffic control] tower. One way to think about it is like wind shear,â he says, referring to the weather hazard responsible for a number of fatal crashes in the 1980s. Wind shear problems were reduced in the 1990s with the development of NEXRAD. âYears ago the FAA got serious about wind shear and implemented a system in some airports where a wind shear advisory light dings in the tower when conditions are dangerous. Weâd like to do something similar for birds. When thereâs a swallow storm out there, nobody wants to fly into it.âÌę
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In Tulsa, Russ DeFusco madeÌęthe toughest sales call of the day: the air traffic control tower. This was the jobâs diplomatic end. Everybody else at the airport and Air National Guard base could be gung-ho about birdstrike prevention, but if the people in the control tower werenât on board, all of DeFuscoâs work might be for naught. He wanted the air traffic controllers to start integrating real-time bird hazard information (that is, pilots and airfield managers spotting flocks of birds near the runway) into their communications with pilots. âIf the [bird hazard] level is severe, they should let pilots in the area know that,â he said in the elevator up to the control tower. âBut theyâve got strict union rules, and sometimes that stops the whole thing cold.â
One supervisor and two controllers worked the tower. It was a slow day, and they could afford to listen to DeFuscoâs pitch. Below the tower two dozen mallards, buffleheads, and gadwalls paddled around a stormwater retention pond. âWe want to make it easy for you,â he told the controllers. They listened politely, but their faces read skeptical. On the way out, the tower supervisor gave DeFusco a few encouraging words. âI think we can do it,â he said. âWeâve just got to make sure itâs not against any of our rules.â
The next morning DeFusco wrapped up his work with a briefing for the 138th Fighter Wing commander, Col. Michael Hepner. DeFusco had been up late the previous night preparing a PowerPoint presentation. He pitched the utility of the AHAS avian radar system, and mentioned the air traffic controllersâ crucial role with diplomacy and tact. Hepner nodded in a way that conveyed his understanding of both the importance of the technology and the difficulty of changing air traffic control protocols.
At the end of the day, DeFusco felt he had made some converts to the cause. The air traffic controllers might not fully support it yet, but DeFusco was confident that the 138th Fighter Wingâs safety officer, Lt. Col. Jimmy Nichols, would continue to press the issue long after DeFuscoâs report was filed away. âThereâs nothing like experience to bring the importance of this issue home,â DeFusco says. âWhen you hit a turkey vulture going 500 knots, like Colonel Nichols did, youâll go out of your way to avoid a repeat performance.â
This article originally ran in the September-October 2008 issue as, "Clearing the Air."Ìę
Ground Control
No single technique will always keep birds out of flight paths, so airports use a variety of strategies. The cheapest option? âThe human being out there hooting and hollering,â says John Ostrom, chair of Bird Strike Committee USA. âIf you want to move birds, âshoo, shoo, shooâ still works.â Here are other popular tools:
Gas cannonsÌęEssentially propane ignited to make a loud noise, gas cannons can be set to timers or remotely controlled. At Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, theyâre often used with distress-cry generators, which broadcast digitally recorded bird sounds.Ìę
RadarÌęSeattle-Tacoma International Airport has been the primary test site for bird radar since 2006, and it recently installed a third radar system. Other airports, including Chicagoâs OâHare and Dallas Fort-Worth in Texas, plan to install bird radar this year.
PyrotechnicsÌęEach day officials at airports nationwide set off everything from bangers and screamers to grenade-launched pyrotechnics to disperse flocks around runways. Theyâre cheap, easy to use, and effectiveâeven against imperturbable Canada geese.
Falcons and dogsÌęNot all solutions are mechanical. New Yorkâs John F. Kennedy International has a resident falconer; his handful of predators keeps smaller birds at bay. Southwest Florida International in Fort Myers is one airport that uses border collies to chase unwanted guests off the tarmac.
PaintballÌęPersonnel often use paintball guns, which are less pricey than animal programs. For this nonlethal tactic, officials at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport aim into and just outside of flocks that donât budge when pyrotechnics are set off.âKatherine Tweed