Birds
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Airports and Bird Strikes?
Do any specific airports have anything to do with the large numbers in specific states? Yes, a Colorado airport for instance has over 3000 recorded bird strikes over the past decade. The locations of airports were originally set up in large spaces of empty land; although now a lot of that land is filled in with businesses and homes the birds still feel as if that land is theirs. Additionally aircraft need to be in a location where the plane can safely land/take off and while doing so they will very likely fly through paths of flocks of low-flying birds.
Costs of Bird Strikes
Another side to this research is the monetary cost of all these repairs needed to undo the damage done by bird strikes. Below gives you a map with costs by state, and it even breaks it down by repairs and other non-repair costs. This graph mirrors the bird strike map for obvious reasons and shows just how costly this event can be.
Unlike the graph above, this one actually shows where the money is coming from, the bigger the square, the larger cost. This graph seems to point to the bigger air fleet, the more bird strikes; however private business aircraft seem very prone to bird strikes which may be due to their ability to land on smaller airports which may be more populated by birds. The military as well faces bird strikes and likely caused more aircraft damage than every American war since Vietnam.
Lastly though, we have the heftiest of costs, human casualties. Although rare, plane crashes due to bird strikes can cause deaths to the passengers and pilots therefore directly causing human loss. Charleston holds the sad title of most bird strike related loss of life with 330. Hopefully this problem can eliminated through better flight patterns and better bird deterrents.
Trends in Bird Strikes
A bird strike is when a bird ends up running into a man made vehicle such as a train, plane or automobile. However planes are most noted for this phenomenon since they are flying with the birds. These not only causes the bird's death but terrible damage to the planes. These events have been attributed to many plane or helicopter crashes, most notably the Miracle on the Hudson in 2009. (For some information on this event look up "US Airways Flight 1549" or the "Miracle on the Hudson" search it on Wikipedia or Youtube) There was even a bird strike recorded during the early part of the Space Shuttle Discovery's flight in 2005. This and the following two posts will display our recent findings on the topic, please enjoy.
Bird strikes occur all over the planet but for this study we have focused on the United States of America and its statistics with bird strikes. Above is a gradient map that shows bird strikes recorded by state. The darker, the more that have occurred there. Unsurprisingly, the highest population centers of people also hold the highest bird strike totals likely due to the multitude of aircraft. Florida, although not extremely populous, is one of the largest vacationing areas in the world which would mean planes are constantly crisscrossing with birds as they migrate. Below is a chart which shows how many bird strikes are recorded by the weather occurring at the time. Although it would appear as clouds don't really seem to matter in comparison, we are handicapped by the third of information that gives us no data on the weather. Logic would think, clouds would equal more bird strikes; however this shows otherwise. The speed of the plane likely has far more to do with bird strikes seeing as a single or small flock of birds would be hard to see regardless of the weather.
Additionally the trend of bird strikes had been going up at a steady pace, then seems to have suddenly jumped between 2008 and 2010 and then goes back to a slow incline. This sudden increase in bird strikes may have been caused by weather confusing birds' flight patterns or a sudden increase in the reporting of bird strikes after the Hudson River event scared some pilots. Another interesting trend is how the birds shown below are the primary casualties, once you go below that the number of birds per species drops significantly. However this information is also incomplete due to the many birds which became too mangled to be identified thus lumped into large generic categories. Gulls are likely struck a lot due to their proximity to coastal airports while Mourning Doves are more likely in the non-coastal regions. No wonder their mourning.
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