Bird Strike on an A-10 Vertical Stabilizer

The following videos contain two perspectives of a bird strike on an A-10 vertical stabilizer. The strike took place in late July 2007, during an air show above the Columbia River in Yakima, WA. The aircraft struck the bird during airshow maneuvers, and after the strike the aircraft landed without further incident.

News Report from KNDO/KNDU Television


View from a Spectator's Camera

Ditching of a US Airways A320 on the Hudson River in New York

Crash of US Airways Flight 1549
Audio: MP3 | Video: iPod/MP4 | WMV | Google Video | YouTube

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On 15 January 2009, a US Airways A320 experienced a loss of power to both engines shortly after taking off from New York's LaGuardia Airport. The crew was able to successfully ditch the aircraft in the Hudson River near midtown Manhattan. Reportedly, the aircraft encountered a flock of birds shortly after takeoff. The aircraft reached an maximum altitude of about 3200 feet before it began to descend. After ditching, all five crew members and 150 passengers evacuated the aircraft. One passenger sustained serious injuries.

According to early reports, the aircraft took off normally toward the north, but the flight crew reported striking a flock of birds about two minutes after takeoff. Both engines lost power, and unable to either return to LaGuardia or to land in nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, the crew turned the aircraft toward the south. After flying over the George Washington Bridge, the crew executed a controlled ditching on the Hudson River just west of midtown Manhattan. The passengers and crew escaped with the help of numerous ferries, tour boats, fireboats, and other vessels in the area.

This was the first crash of an Airbus A320 operated by a US airline. The A320 has had eight events involving passenger fatalities. The first was a 1988 crash involving Air France, and the most recent was a May 2008 crash of a TACA airliner in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

While many jet airliners have crashed in the water, prior research by AirSafe.com revealed only three previous events where the crew of a large passenger jet intentionally ditched the aircraft in a controlled manner. Prior to the US Airways event, the most recent ditching involved a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines 767 in 1996. The others included a 1963 ditching of an Aeroflot jet in Leningrad (present day St. Petersburg), and a 1970 ditching of a DC-9 in the Caribbean.

Fatal and serious bird strike related crashes of large jet aircraft are also quite rare. The last fatal US bird strike accident involving a large jet was the crash of a US Air Force E-3 AWACS in Alaska in 1995. The last time bird strikes led to passenger deaths in the US was in 1960 in Boston. Since 1990, five other large jet airliners have crashed due to bird strikes, but only one involved fatalities.

The NTSB is currently investigating this US Airways accident. For updates on this investigation, and for the latest news from AirSafe.com, visit hudson.airsafe.org.

For related information, visit:
Previous US Airways Crashes
Other Significant A320 Events

Bird Strike in Paris - the Music Video

The previous post was about a 2001 birstrike event involving an American Airlines 767 near Paris. Just for fun, I decided to make a music video out of it.



For more on how to make these kinds of videos using any kind of photo or graphic that you may have, check out this posting on The Conversation at AirSafe.com podcast blog.

By the way, the song is "Time and Place" from from the Canadian group In-Flight Safety (yes, that is their name).

Historical Bird Strike Event on a 767

On 22 October 2007, the Associated Press reported that NASA had planned to not release a report on a survey of over 24,000 pilots about safety for fear that the public would lose confidence in the air transportation system (visit the AirSafe.com news site to see my comments on their decision). One of the issues was that pilots reported about double the amount of many bird strikes as would be found in the FAA's database.

That particular fact made me look up a bird strike event from 2001 to see if it were in the publicly accessible FAA and NTSB accident and incident databases. I did not find it, so I decided to provide NASA and the public with one more data point.

On 2 April 2001, an American Airlines B767-300 was on a scheduled flight from Paris, France (CDG) to Miami when the aircraft experienced a multiple birdstrike during climb out at flight level 140. The crew returned to CDG. Most impacts were on the nose and wings. An impact between the radome and captain's windshield, next to the TAT probe, punctured the airframe and allowed bird debris to enter the cockpit.
Cabin depressurization was reported. The first officer was the pilot flying at the time of strike and the captain took over after putting on his oxygen mask. The engines operated normally throughout the event with the crew reporting no changes in engine parameters. After landing, inspections did not reveal any engine damage or evidence of bird ingestion. A bird stain was observed on position 1 inlet outer barrel on the left-hand side.

The French BEA conducted an investigation. It is likely that no record of this event was found in the publicly accessible online databases of the FAA or NTSB because the event occurred outside the U.S. However, shortly after the event I was sent details of the event, along with a number of photos, from someone close to the investigation. If you want to see just what you are missing from the NASA, FAA, and NTSB database, then take a look at the online gallery of photos.

Video Trailer from These Photos

Russian Bird Strike Test

In this undated video, the windscreen of an unidentified Russian transport aircraft is subjected to a bird strike test where the test article, presumably a bird carcass, was fired at the left hand windscreen. There was no significant damage to the window.

Multiple Bird Airliner Encounter

This undated strike event involved an in-flight encounter with multiple birds. At least one bird struck the wing of the unidentified jet transport aircraft, resulting in minor damage to the leading edge of the right wing inboard of the engine.

Bird Strike on a Spaceship

Bird strikes are not just a problem for airplanes anymore. During the launch of Space Shuttle flight STS-114 on July 26, 2005, a bird hit the external fuel tank shortly after liftoff. Fortunately, the strike did not affect the Shuttle. The bird probably did not fare as well.