Air travel is meant to be a safe and efficient mode of transportation, however, the dangers of bird strike remain a challenge facing the aviation industry.
Bird strike refers to the collision between airborne animals usually birds and a moving vehicle or aircraft that is in flight or on take-off or landing, such incidents can be fatal and cause damage to an airplane and the people in it.
According to Wikipedia, most accidents occur when a bird (or group of birds) collides with the windscreen or is sucked into the engine of jet aircraft.
Bird strikes occur during any phase but mostly during the take-off and landing phases due to the greater number of birds in flight at lower levels. Since most birds fly mainly during the day, most strikes occur in daylight.
Read also: FAAN commissions equipment to tackle bird strike across airports
Reports have shown that these incidents which are not planned for nor forseen, can damage the aircraft and individuals involved.
One of the first recorded incidents of bird strike collision happened to Carl Rogers, a pilot, in 1912, on his journey from coast to coast, in the United States, due to a collision with a bird Seagull, which led to his downfall in California and his death.
Another bird strike incident happened to Eastern Air Lines Flight375, registration N5533, a Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft that crashed on takeoff from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 4, 1960, due to a bird strike. Out of the 72 people on board, 10 survived, with nine sustaining serious injuries.
Tragically, 62 individuals lost their lives in the incident, which still stands as the deadliest bird strike in aviation history. That is the damage a bird strike can cause to a flight.
Similarly, Airpeace a Nigeria airline suffered 26 bird strike incidents between February and June 2023.
Allen Onyema, the chairman of Airpeace said the airline experiences an average of five bird strikes every month and loses aircraft engines to most of the incidents.
The General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), the regulator of Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation sector in a report gave methods to fight birds at the airport such as developing a device that beeps to scare the birds in areas, removing nests in the trees, and removing some of the swamps located around the airport.
Recalled that, Olubunmi Kuku, the manager of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) recently commissioned the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Wildlife Hazard Control Equipment to tackle the hazard of bird strikes at airports across the country.
Kuku said that the equipment would also fight the threat posed by wildlife to air safety and help to improve safety in the aviation industry.
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