A flock of canada geese brought down US Airways flight 1549 (Image: Mike Baird - http://flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2336548126/)

The Wright Brothers were inspired to take to the air by the sight of turkey vultures circling over the Ohio River. Unfortunately, the history of birds and aircraft hasn’t always been so productive.

Yesterday’s (thankfully nonfatal) splashdown of a jet in the Hudson River has thrown the threat that birds pose to modern aircraft into sharp relief.

Since 1988, 219 people have died worldwide in air crashes caused by birds choking jet engines, according to the Bird Strike Committee, an advocacy group trying to alleviate the problem. In 2001, a UK study estimated that birds cost aviation $1.3 billion globally by damaging and delaying planes.


The toughened turbine blades in a jet engine are immensely strong, but there’s little they can do when confronted with a flock of fat Canada geese, each weighing up to 6kg.

Don’t explode

International Civil Aviation Organisation regulations say that jet engines must be able to ingest a small bird without problems. But for large birds, the rules say only that the engine must not explode.

So why not stop our feathered friends getting into the turbines at all, perhaps by fixing a grille over the engine’s air intake?

John Downer, an expert in risk management at the London School of Economics, researched anti-birdstrike safety measures for his 2007 paper When the Chick Hits the Fan. He says anti-avian grilles have been considered but ruled out.

‘Not practical’

Birds hit engines so fast that any sufficiently sturdy grille would be very heavy, Downer told me. “There would also be fuel inefficiency as the heavy grille would occlude airflow into the engine,” Downer says. “So the idea gets dismissed quickly because it is not practical from an engineering point of view.”

So the only answer appears to be continued vigilance on the part of air traffic managers, who can use cannons and recordings of predators’ songs to scare birds off, or direct planes to avoid migratory routes and delaying flights. But it’s probably going to get more difficult to predict when bird strikes are likely as climate change alters behavioural and migratory patterns (PDF).

New tools may make the job easier. For example, improved radar or “audio telescopes” could make it easier to spot dangerous situations.

But despite these advances, it seems likely that bird strikes are with us to stay. Interestingly, the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Laboratory has worked out which species causes the most costly birdstrike damage. It’s the turkey vulture – the bird that originally inspired the Wright brothers.