Bird strikes

Thirty or so people had their cookies and coffee in hand as we all sat in the lobby right off the flight ramp. Halfway through the presentation, the door opened, and in walked one of our flight instructors with his shell-shocked, five-foot-tall student, who looked like he had seen a ghost. I mention his height for a reason; stay with me here. The instructor and student had been out practicing night landings when a blue heron came through the front windscreen. Forgive me if you are eating your dinner while you read this, but I just want you to “see” what I saw that night. There was a jagged, bloody, feathered, 18-inch long hole in the windscreen. The trail of gore indicated that the heron next struck the top right corner of the pilot’s seat and headrest. The bird’s long bluish-white neck sat at an odd angle in the back cargo compartment when I peered over the backseat to get a look.

Back inside the building, people were rattled. “Wow, that looks terrifying.” “A taller man would have been killed.” And the thing that everyone was thinking, but no one was saying…there was absolutely nothing those pilots could have done to prevent the bird strike. They were landing on a dark night and couldn’t see the bird before it was too late. And if there was nothing that could be done, then what in the world were we all doing there pretending we had some control over the outcome? This sort of a realization is a hard pill for most of us to swallow, especially a room full of pilots. No one likes to feel helpless in an airplane.

Well, according to the rest of the seminar, there are a few things that you can do to prevent bird strikes. For example, if you see a flock of birds, maneuver in a different direction if there’s enough time. Birds tend to dive when approaching an obstacle, so take heart in the fact that they will likely also be moving to avoid you. If you are close to the ground, however, your get-out-of-the-way-maneuvering should be kept to a minimum. It would be unwise to fly like an aerobatic pilot, pulling up aggressively when you see a random bird approaching, especially in the traffic pattern. I’ll take a bird strike over a low-altitude stall any day.

Also, do not fly at low altitudes over wildlife refuges or marshland. According to the FAA’s website, 90 percent of bird strikes happen under 3,000 feet agl. So, cruising at higher altitudes should reduce much of the risk. Not all of it though. Bird strikes have occurred at 37,000 feet according to an AOPA subject report. Luckily your chances of a bird strike that results in a fatality (for the human, the birds don’t fare so well) are infinitesimally small. In the past 30 years, fewer than 500 fatalities have occurred as a result of wildlife strikes globally for military and civil aviation, according to the FAA. Do you know how many people get in an airplane every year? Billions.

There are also some things we can do to give ourselves the best possible outcome should a bird strike occur. Here’s how an instructor friend handled it: He was out practicing ground reference maneuvers with a student in a Cessna 172 when they noticed a flock of birds too close for comfort. The flock veered off, but one straggler collided with the aircraft wing in what felt like a “car crash” according to the CFI, with a loud bang followed by a sudden hard yaw to the left. After they regained control and visually verified no fuel was leaking from the dented wing, they made the decision to fly back to Olive Branch Airport (OLV), where the nearest paved runway awaited. They carried extra right rudder to keep the airplane straight and landed with no flaps and extra airspeed (in case their new wing design came with increased stall speed). I was proud of the way they handled the incident, calmly flying their airplane and making wise adjustments on approach and landing.

So, for all of you pilots out there whose heart starts to race when you realize you are sharing the sky with an unpredictable feathered missile, remember that you do have some control, small though it may be. Just ask the most famous bird strike survivor ever, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. “Flight 1549 had shown people that there are always further actions you can take. There are ways out of the tightest spots” (Sully: The Untold Story Behind the Miracle on the Hudson). No, we can’t protect ourselves completely, but we can do lots of little things to help. Thank you, aviation, for teaching us yet another life lesson: Control the controllables, and let the rest go.

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