BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. — Winter is coming, which means airplane pilots have to navigate takeoffs, landings and skies dotted with birds making their way south.
For many pilots, striking a tiny sparrow or starling will barely be a blip on the radar. But when a U.S. Airways flight struck a flock of Canada geese shortly after departure in 2009, Capt. Chesley Sullenberger III was forced to land on the Hudson River.
The event, and subsequent movie, “Sully,” which came out last month, brought national attention to bird strikes, which occur whenever a bird or flock of birds strikes an aircraft. Such collisions are most common during takeoff and landing.
Nationally, nearly 11,000 bird strikes were reported in 2013, the most recent data available from the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Department of Transportation.
Locally, passengers traveling through the Tri-Cities Airport in Blountville, Tennessee, have little reason to ruffle their feathers.
A Herald Courier analysis of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Wildlife Strike Database revealed that bird strikes are rare at Tri-Cities. Annually, 48,000 planes take off and land at the regional airport, according to Patrick Wilson, executive director of Tri-Cities Airport. In 2015, eight bird strikes were reported.
Since 2000, 61 wildlife strikes have been reported at Tri-Cities, all but one caused by a bird. The outlier: a coyote. Fifty-seven of the strikes hit commercial jetliners or business planes. The remaining four hit smaller aircraft.
However, the number of strikes locally and nationally is probably higher than the reported total because the system relies on voluntary self-reporting by pilots, airlines and airports.
The Tri-Cities Airport has a number of techniques and tools to combat bird interference. If birds are spotted on or near a runway, the first step is typically driving by with a patrol vehicle to scare them off. If the birds persist, sirens on the vehicles are used.
Officials can also play recordings of bird distress calls and the sounds of predatory birds. If those noises don’t work, airport officers bring out the heavy firing power.
Airport officers have three types of pyrotechnics designed to scare birds away: Bird Bangers, which are fired from a pistol and make a loud bang sound when exploding; Screamer Sirens, which also are fired from a pistol and emit a 100-decibel siren sound; and Shell Crackers, which are fired from a 12-gauge shotgun and create a bang upon explosion.
Officer Jonathan Bright of the Tri-Cities Airport Authority said none of the firepower used is lethal or harms wildlife. The airport must apply for an annual permit with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to use the ammunition, which Bright described as “oversize blanks.”
The airport spends about $650 a year on bird strike mitigation efforts, which includes the cost of the explosives and renewing the pyrotechnics permit.
Additionally, Tri-Cities staff conducts morning and evening inspections to look for animals and all employees on the airfield are trained to watch for wildlife. The grass is maintained so that it isn’t appealing to animals; not too high, not too low.
The 10-foot fence surrounding the airport has a strip of concrete at the base to stop animals from boring beneath it and three lines of wire at the top.
Even with all the precautions taken, bird strikes do happen. That’s wher Carla Dove comes into play.
Dove is the program manager of the Feather Identification Lab at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Dove and her team work to identify the remains of the birds that strike planes. The lab receives about 9,000 cases a year.
She said identifying the birds that hit planes can help prevent bird strikes.
“It’s important to have the species identification,” Dove said. “That is the first step in prevention — in knowing what the bird eats, when it’s there, how much it weighs, what’s it doing, why is it on your airfield.”
Sending samples to the lab is also a volunteer effort, one for which Dove advocates. Identification helps airports not only manage the surrounding habitat and keep animals at bay, Dove said, but also can help engineers design plane engines built to withstand bird strikes.
Each year, Dove said her department successfully identifies 85-90 percent of specimens down to the species level — a Mallard duck, for example. If there isn’t enough DNA or if the sample is contaminated in some way, the lab may only be able to identify the type of bird — simply a duck, rather than knowing what kind of duck.
Some of the remains Dove receives are intact and can be identified by sight. If feather down or tissue is all that’s left, Dove and her team head to the microscope.
From 1990 to 2013, 52 percent of national bird strikes occurred between July and October — peak migration season — according to the FAA and Department of Transportation.
There are four major migration patterns in the U.S., and Blountsville is located between two of them: the Mississippi Flyway, which runs south from Canada through Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, western Kentucky and Tennessee southward; and the Atlantic Flyway, which runs along the East Coast.
“The most risky time for bird strikes is now,” Dove said.
