Sea-Tac plan to avoid bird hits put in place in ’70s
In the 1970s, Sea-Tac Airport became the first in the United States to hire a full-time biologist to design an ecologically friendly program to keep aircraft from hitting wildlife and birds from getting sucked into jet engines.
The effort appears to have worked.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus said that during his eight-year tenure, no planes departing or arriving at Sea-Tac have crashed because of a bird strike.
“From an air traffic standpoint around Puget Sound, small commuter aircraft have reported bird strikes, but thank goodness, they’ve been small birds or small aircraft,” Fergus said.
“Still, hitting a bird can be extremely devastating — it can take an airplane down very quickly — it’s a serious concern, though rather rare.”
A search of the FAA database of airplane crashes revealed no crashes related to bird strikes at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Since 1990, planes flying through Washington state airspace have struck birds 1,376 times, according to the FAA database, which recorded 92 bird strikes in Washington last year alone.
The smell of burning and a loud humming sound were the only indications of a strike that the pilot of a cargo aircraft noted after hitting a bird at 500 feet when departing Sea-Tac Airport at night in July 1996, according to an anonymous report to NASA.
Only after inspecting one of their engines upon landing at their destination did crew members discover that it had “ingested a bird causing damage to the C-1 blade.”
On Jan. 19, 1992, a Piper pilot was flying 140 knots on his way to Everett at about 1,000 feet when a mallard smashed through his windscreen before landing in the rear of the plane. Hitting the duck actually knocked the pilot’s contact lenses out, but he pulled out a pair of glasses and made an emergency landing in Arlington.
A flight instructor and student flying above Vancouver, Wash., on Jan. 29, 1987, were less fortunate.
As they flew through a flock of birds, the instructor, “for unknown reasons possibly related to previous bird strike occurrence, executed a countermaneuver (rolling pull-up),” which stressed the right wing to the point of failure. Both instructor and student died.
Prevention, then, is the key.
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The Port of Seattle designed its replacement of wetlands dislocated by Sea-Tac to drive birds away from the airfield and its three runways.
The 113 acres of wetlands near the airport are heavily forested with trees such as cedars and cottonwoods to keep large flocks of birds from feeding and nesting there, and the port sowed 158,000 native plants known to be unattractive to birds, eschewing all varieties that produce fruits, nuts and berries.
The port also developed a grass seed mix containing a fungus that makes it less appetizing to some birds and insects.
Port biologist Steve Osmek scares away ducks, and some adult hawks that have already formed their territory at the airport from departing and landing planes with a small pistol that makes a loud noise like fireworks.
Since June 2001, nearly 100 raptors have been trapped alive near Sea-Tac and relocated to safer habitats in northern Washington.
From September 2007 through August 2008, the FAA recorded that planes struck Canada geese, double-breasted cormorants, house sparrows, rock pigeons and tree sparrows the most — two strikes per species.
Collisions between birds and planes date back to 1908, when the first known aircraft-bird strike was reported, according to a U.K. Civil Aviation Authority study.
The first fatality came four years later when the unfortunate pilot of a Wright Flyer struck a gull with his plane’s wing.
As planes have grown faster and multiplied in the skies, the danger grows: A 2 pound bird can hit with more than twice the force when a plane is flying at 400 miles per hour compared with 200 mph, according to the port’s Web site.
Still, no matter what an airport does, it can’t control what happens outside its property — such as Canada geese flocking on the Hudson River.