CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Congress will investigate ways to better protect planes from collisions with birds and search for other lessons from the crippled jet that was forced to land in the Hudson River last week.

Rep Jerry Costello, D-Ill., who chairs the House aviation subcommittee, told The Charlotte Observer Friday his staff is organizing a hearing that will feature testimony from safety experts as well as the flight crew of the Charlotte-bound jet.

At a time when large birds increasingly collide with planes, aviation experts are also hunting for new methods to keep birds away from aircraft.

A bird strike likely disabled the engines on US Airways Flight 1549 after it left New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Jan. 15, evidence collected so far suggests. The pilot brought the plane down on the Hudson River, and all 155 passengers and crew members were evacuated safely.

But the outcome could have been disastrous, experts say.

Rising populations of big birds, along with a shift to commercial aircraft with fewer – and quieter – engines, have increased the risk of mid-air trouble. Those birds have destroyed jet engines and occasionally cause fatal crashes.

From 1990 through 2007, the Federal Aviation Administration fielded about 80,000 reports of birds colliding with planes, according to a federal study last year.

Safety expert John Goglia said he hopes to hold a “bird summit” in New York that would include airline and airport representatives, plane and engine manufacturers, military officials and bird experts.

Goglia, who served from 1995 to 2004 on the National Transportation Safety Board, said he’ll also urge the NTSB to convene a public hearing on the issue.

“We have long known that prior to any accident there are warnings,” said Goglia, who previously worked as a crash investigator for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. “This is clearly our warning. If we don’t address it, the outcome in the future may not be so good.”

The NTSB investigates airline crashes and uses the findings to recommend safety improvements. If the agency learns that birds were chiefly responsible for downing Flight 1549, it will likely propose federal changes to reduce collisions with wildlife.

Costello said he expects the hearing before his congressional committee to focus not only on safety problems, but on what’s working. No date for the hearing has been set.

“People often complain about government regulations and standards,” he said. “In this case, the training mandated by the FAA – and … by airlines in-house – obviously paid off. Everybody did what they were trained to do and did it superbly.”

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said he wants lawmakers to examine whether air traffic controllers in New York had technology sufficient to pinpoint the birds that reportedly collided with the jet – and whether the technology was intentionally “dumbed down” to eliminate clutter on radar screens.

Mica, the ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he’s troubled that the Federal Aviation Administration has been without a permanent administrator since September 2007 – a factor that he says may have slowed safety advances.

He also advocates redesigning the air space around New York City to give air traffic controllers more options for routing planes.

“We’ve seen a problem,” Mica said. “We’ll hopefully learn from it and address it so it doesn’t happen again.”


A year ago, concerns about waterfowl-jet collisions helped kill the Navy’s plan to build a practice landing field near Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern North Carolina. The refuge attracts some 100,000 large snow geese and tundra swans each year.

Experts hope new technology will help detect birds and keep them away from planes. They recommend more research into lighting on planes to scare away birds, vegetation that can make airports less attractive to wildlife, and radar that can be used to pinpoint the location of bird flocks from miles away.

Richard Dolbeer, one of the nation’s leading authorities on preventing bird strikes, said he hopes last week’s accident will focus attention on a long-neglected problem.

“It’s an accident that’s just been waiting to happen,” he said. “We’ve had a number of close calls in recent years. … And it’s going to happen again.”


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PREVENTING BIRD STRIKES

Experts concerned about birds colliding with aircraft recommend:

-Making airports less attractive to birds. One solution is to plant grass that’s less palatable to birds and the insects they feed on.

-Better managing populations of over-abundant birds. The number of resident Canada geese – a large bird that can be particularly dangerous to air travelers – has quadrupled in the U.S. since 1990.

-Making planes more visible to birds. Modern jets are quieter than their predecessors, so birds sometimes don’t know a jet is coming. Equipping planes with pulsating or ultraviolet lights may help scare off birds.

-Using radar to pinpoint bird flocks. DeTect, Inc., has installed radar systems in three Air Force bases to help prevent collisions .

Dallas-Fort Worth Airport is trying out the equipment in a demonstration project. The equipment can detect a flock of geese up to eight miles away, the company says. Airport staffers can use that information to chase birds away; air traffic controllers can use it to warn pilots or make decisions about delaying planes.

-Redesigning planes to help survive bird strikes. Keeping birds out of jet engines isn’t easy, experts say. Screens across engines could disrupt the flow of air, which is critical to generating engine thrust. If loosened by a bird strike, screens could become entangled in the engine.

Source: Richard Dolbeer, a retired U.S. Department of Agriculture biologist who has helped airports prevent bird strikes; Charlotte Observer research.

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(c) 2009, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

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Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

AP-NY-01-23-09 1952EST