Up in the air

Like many news watchers, I found it thrilling that the pilot of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 was able to protect his passengers and spare the 9-11-haunted city of New York from another aircraft-related tragedy.
Pilot C.B. Sullenberger earned widespread praise for his masterful handling in landing the disabled Airbus A320 in the Hudson River without a single casualty after reporting the plane suffered a double-bird strike.
Quick thinking ferry and tugboat captains also contributed to the fortunate result by wasting no time in moving their vessels in to collect the 155 passengers off the wings of the sinking plane.
The excitement and enthusiasm by the major news agencies to praise a new popular hero in a time when most topics have been dismal, depressing or worse clearly showed.
Given the happy outcome, giddy and relieved reporters on NPR laughed about the work undertaken National Transportation Safety Board to confirm whether it was a bird strike that caused the planes problems, particularly about the new word they learned: Snarge.
You heard it right — snarge. It basically means the residue from the living creature left over after a vehicle/bird collision.
A smear of blood and guts, in other words, as well as feathers and whatever else may survive passing through a jet engine or smacking the windscreen at 100 mph.
Lots of bird-plane collisions occur, but because planes are built to withstand such incidents and because that it usually only becomes a problem if a pilot's sight is obstructed or unless it knocks an engine out, it doesn't often rise to the level of high drama as the one last week in New York.
Thanks to enterprising reporters, lots of information about aviation safety and bird strikes have emerged in the last week.
It's being said that a bird strike happens to about one in every 10,000 flights.
The Associated Press, after flippantly saying this bird (or these birds) won this time by taking down the Airbus, quoted University of Dayton researcher Kevin Poormon in that bird strikes have caused 200 fatalities in the last 20 years with a total of 5,000 impacts reported each year.
"Aircraft are being struck every day by birds," he told AP. "The reason you don't hear about them so much is they are designed to take these impacts. But once you get to large flocks or large birds striking at a critical moment, that's where these events hit the news."
An MSNBC article offered more details on the frequency of bird strikes, noting a quadrupling of the incidents from 1990 to 2007, when the numbers rose from 1,738 per year to 7,439, causing "3,094 precautionary landings, 1,442 aborted takeoffs, 312 engine shutdowns and 1,162 minor negative effects," based on information from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Such collisions are most likely to occur at low altitudes, as when a plane is taking off or landing.
The researcher that MSNBC asked about the increase, Richard A. Dolbeer, a retired ornithologist with the Department of Agriculture at the Wildlife Services in Sandusky, Ohio, explained the phenomenon is a result of better environmental practices.
Populations of larger birds that cause the most damage to engines, like great blue heron, osprey, snow goose and Canada goose have rebounded in the years since the U.S. passed the Clean Water Act and outlawed the pesticide known as DDT.
It also seems like an increasing number of flights or the birds being pushed into areas that are less desirable because development is crowding them out of their element might also be factors in this safety issue, but I'm just a layman.
The conventional wisdom is that flying is the safest way to travel, and as proven last week by Sullenberger — a gifted practitioner in his profession — a few pilots have the skills to turn what could be a massive calamity into a safety triumph.
The National Aircraft Controllers Association reports that there are 87,000 flights in the air each day, about 30,000 being commercial airliners. It's too much to hope for that each and every one has a pilot aboard as talented as Sullenberger.
When it comes to safety, keep in mind that flights originate out of airports where planners can exert control over safety issues and take corrective action against more bird strikes happening, forensic bird identification scientist and snarge expert Carla Dove pointed out to NPR. Identifying the bird helps planners avoid future incidents by letting them understand the species' behavior and showing them what they need to prepare for.
What's needed occasionally may be as simple as cutting the grass to prevent birds from taking cover there, or maybe moving a pond that might be attractive to waterfowl.
"If you think about pest management, and that's really what this is, it's like a safety issue," she told NPR. "You can't really do anything about the problem until you know what the species that's causing the problem is."
Experts acknowledge, though, that they can't control every variable in birds versus airplane troubles.
So it seems logical to conclude that an increasing number of airplanes in the skies alongside more birds means more problems in the air, more opportunities for strikes to cause an engine flame out.
So what's that mean for the vaunted dream of personal flight? The idea that everyone who needs to get from point A to point B will do so in a personal jet or air car?
Stay tuned for next week's column to look at more closely at human technology-bird conflicts.