Bird strikes affect aircraft daily - Heathrow Airport News

Airport news for Heathrow on 27/04/2009.

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According to the database of information on wildlife strikes against aircraft in the US, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) revealed that Denver International Airport reported the greatest number of bird strikes in the last decade, at 2,090.

Most of the collisions nationwide involve the mourning dove.

Strikes occurring from January 1990 through November 2008 are found in the database, which includes listings of 112,000 wildlife collisions in all. Birds were involved in 97 percent of all incidents, but other animals were as well, including prairie dogs, foxes, rabbits, bats, muskrats, moose, domestic dogs and turtles.

The database is not considered complete, according to federal officials, as some airlines and pilots did not fill in forms completely. There were also cases in which the species might not have been correctly identified by the person identifying the remains.

“This is a voluntary strike reporting system, therefore you get different airports and different airlines that have more robust procedures for reporting,” said FAA deputy director of airport safety and standards, James R. White.

Included in the database is information on aircraft type, altitude at the time of the incident, the time of day the strike occurred and other relevant details regarding the circumstances.

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