April 25, 2009

Most bird strikes on airplanes don’t to the damage that Sully Sullenberg faced when he had to ditch his plane, loaded with passengers, into the Hudson River.

Many are so minor, they are never reported, but it happens a lot more frequently than the FAA wanted you to know. Now they have been forced to open their data base.

It shows there have been 87 bird strikes by planes flying in and out of Kalamazoo Battle Creek International in the last 19 years.

That’s just a fraction of the 428 recorded at Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids. Detroit Metro recorded 777 in that period.