![]() If the pilots in Tulsa thought their nimble fighter jets made them less vulnerable, DeFusco told them, they should think again. It crashed in heavy woods outside of Anchorage, destroying the plane and killing all 24 crew members aboard. The birds knocked out the two left engines, sending the plane out of control. Two months later, on September 22, an Air Force AWACS communication plane struck 25 Canada geese during takeoff. When DeFusco delivered a plan for an aggressive bird management program, the officials put a few suggestions into action but ignored most of the recommendations. One bird will draw dozens and then hundreds of others.” “If he lands and feeds, that sends a signal to the rest of the flock. “You’ve got to watch the runway grass carefully, and do everything in your power to harass that first migrating bird away from here,” DeFusco told Elmendorf officials. Migrating flocks liked to rest and feed on the grass surrounding the base’s runways. Elmendorf had a notorious Canada geese problem. In July 1995 DeFusco gave a similar briefing to officials at Elmendorf Air Force Base outside Anchorage, Alaska. “These guys are worried about dodging bullets, not birds,” DeFusco told me, “so I’ve got to get their attention in a hurry.” To a fighter pilot just back from combat, though, Canada geese may be low on the list of concerns. His job is to keep gulls, starlings, and turkey vultures from getting sucked into the Vipers’ engines. The presenter that morning was Russ DeFusco, a leading authority on birdstrikes. ![]() They had the look of Top Guns expecting to endure a time waster taught by a civilian. Shoulder patches identified them as members of the Tulsa Vipers F-16 squadron recently returned from Iraq. The fighter pilots wore green flight suits. On a morning last December in Tulsa, members of the 138th Fighter Wing of the Oklahoma Air National Guard filtered into a conference room for a 9 a.m. They’ve discovered it requires an ornithologist’s knowledge of bird behavior, high-tech radar equipment, labor-intensive ground observation, and some old-fashioned wildlife detective work. While the accident brought the dangers of birdstrikes to the nation’s attention, experts have long been investigating the most effective ways to curtail such collisions. He and the crew helped all 155 people on board get off safely. The plane didn’t have enough altitude to glide back to LaGuardia, so Sullenberger executed an emergency water landing on the Hudson River. “It was the worst sickening, pit-of-your-stomach, falling-through-the-floor feeling I’ve ever felt in my life,” Captain Chesley Sullenberger would later tell CBS’s 60 Minutes. The big catastrophe nearly came on January 15, 2009.Ībout 90 seconds after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport, US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of Canada geese, disabling both engines. Nobody will get involved until we have a big catastrophe.” “The airline industry doesn’t want to get involved because they’re afraid they might have to spend money. “The numbers keep going up, and the FAA is just clueless,” Paul Eschenfelder, a veteran pilot for a major international airline, told me late last year. Those who work in the specialized field of birdstrike avoidance have spoken out for years about the rising hazard of airplanes hitting birds.
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