Mr. LaHood just announced a requirement for the FAA to release all data on bird strikes. The FAA has been fighting this release for good reason. There are many strikes every year. In my flying career I've had about 11 bird strikes on my airplane. Several co-workers told me that sooner or later the US would have a US AIR type accident. They cited the EAL Boston crash of an L-188 (Electra) as going to happen again. This report may (?) get a few nervous flyers out of airplanes onto short haul passenger rail. Of my 11 strikes only one passenger ever noticed a bird strike. Its not usually apparent to a passenger. Any comments?
There is something about flying...and about driving,too, come to think of it...that does not seem to deter individuals. Despite the potential volitilty of an airplane crash and the odds on favoring an automobile accident, the American public is hell bound to do it, brushing aside all negative comments. But mention a train derailment, and they are all over it but not to ride!
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Well, after the initial main-stream media "fear-mongering" and the requisite sound-bite interviews of "worried passengers" about this - as has been aptly described here before - most will ignore or forget it and push it to the back of their minds, still suffering from "hazards of life" overload (there must be a more technical term for that ?), and life will go on as before.
If anything, releasing the high number of such strikes may make it clearer that it is a pretty routine occurance (albeit undersirable and unpredictable), and that in all but said 1 or 2 cases it doesn't mean anything from a safety perspective. There are bigger risks from things that can be controlled - ice build-up on wings, flying into bad weather or landing on poor runway conditions, Air Traffic Control System problems, etc., etc.
That said: One of my colleagues was on the Allegiant Air flight from Orlando back to Allentown about 2 weeks ago that hit an eagle of some kind during takeoff. Evidently it hit on one of the duplicate and redundant pitometers (? - pitot tube instrument input ?) on the wing that that provides the raw input data on airspeed and altitude, etc. Ron says that the cabin then had a mild but still acrid, smoky-burned odor. The pilot kept the landing gear down and did a low-altitude, low-speed "fly-by" to have the control tower look over the plane and confirm that the gear was down and that the damage was as little as it seemed. So they landed anyway because the pilot didn't like the idea of the going the entire flight with one of those key instruments out of commission, and then came home on a substitiute plane about 5 hours later. His 8-year old son said that it was all kind of neat, but Ron would just as soon not have that happen again.
- Paul North.
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