How much damage can a bird do to a jet airliner? Enough to take out an engine, apparently.
A Thompson Airlines flight from Bournemouth in England, heading for Tenerife, was reportedly forced to make an emergency landing at Gatwick after a seagull “shattered the core of the engine”.
The incident raises the question of how dangerous bird strikes can be.
A major area of concern is the geese colony near La Guardia airport in New York. That was the scene of a bird strike that took out both engines of US Airways Flight 1549. Quick action by the captain, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who ditched the plane in the Hudson River, is credited with saving the lives of the passengers and crew.
A New York Daily News report from the time said bird strike had caused at least two major airline disasters in the United States. The worst was in 1960, when an Eastern Airlines plane crashed into Boston Harbour after hitting birds, killing 62 passengers.
The report said bird strikes cost the aviation industry about $600 million a year and that nearly 500 planes were damaged by collisions with birds between 2000 and 2009.
Some airports try to mitigate the risk by culling bird populations in their vicinity – a move not popular with animal rights activists.
