Darwin airport sees double the number of bird strikes in 10 years
The number of aircraft hitting birds near Darwin airport has more than doubled in the past decade.
Kites, eagles, swans, and even tiny wrens are among bird species meeting unlucky ends with aircraft, according to a report on the increasing number of bird strikes in Australia during the past 10 years.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) research report showed the number of aircraft striking birds is increasing as more airlines and private planes take to the sky, posing "a significant economic risk for airport and airline operators and a potential safety risk for pilots".
Dr Stuart Godly from the ATSB said Darwin stands alone from other major capitals, which have experienced a slight decrease in incidents per aircraft.
"If a bird gets ingested into the engine of a large aircraft it's going to require the aircraft to land on one engine so there is obviously a bit of a safety issue going on there," he said.
Kites, a bird of prey common to Northern Australia, are the most frequent species to be hit by planes, though why collision rates have increased is not clear, says Dr Godly.
In 2012, a kite smashed through the windshield of a Cessna 210 approaching landing in the Northern Territory, hitting the pilot in the face.
In Western Australia a small unmanned helicopter was destroyed after it hit an eagle and in 2013, and at Hedfield airport in Queensland a passenger received minor injuries after a brush turkey struck the wing of a light aircraft, causing it to run off into a paddock and into a bull.
Other common casualties include flying foxes, plovers and flocking galahs, and are often detected only when they are scraped out of a plane's engines at the end of a flight.
The report said bird strikes pose the most risk when the animals fly into turbofan engines, such as those on large Boeing and Airbus passenger planes.
In 2009, an Airbus A320 made a daring emergency landing on the Hudson River in the United States following a double engine failure after striking multiple Canadian geese.
More recently, a Boeing 737-900 on descent to Denver suffered serious damage after a single ibis collided with it at more than 5,000 feet.
Since 2004 only four of the 14,571 bird strikes that have occurred in Australia were classified as posing a high safety risk and all involved helicopters, but Dr Godly said collisions were costly.
Aerodrome wildlife officers are employing different strategies to deter birds from the course of planes.
"They range from either mowing the lawns to ensure they're not attracting to setting off pyrotechnic or guns prior to flights landing ... and even having dogs patrolling the areas," he said.
