I read a startling statistic recently. In 2013, there were more than 11,000 reported bird strike incidents among commercial, military and general aviation airplanes in the United States.
That’s a lot of birds hitting a lot of aircraft. And now researchers think they know why bird strikes are so common in aviation.
It turns out that birds are exceptionally agile, with the maneuverability in flight to easily dive or swerve out of the way when they see your airplane coming, yet in the majority of cases they don’t react quickly enough to avoid catastrophe.
The trouble, researchers say, is that birds don’t react to a perceived threat until the predator (another bird or an airplane) is within about 100 feet. At speeds above about 60 knots, the closure rate at that distance is simply too fast for the bird to get out of the way.
So even though a bird may see you coming from a mile away, it won’t necessarily take any action to avoid a collision until it’s too late. It’s a quirk of evolution, and why we tend to think of “bird brains” generally as a bad thing.
It also helps explain why a flock of geese flew right into an Airbus A320 over New York a few years back.
It doesn’t really help us avoid birds, unfortunately.
But there are some precautions you can take while flying. For instance, if you see birds ahead, it’s generally not a good idea to fly under them because they will usually dive if they perceive a threat. You can also take evasive action if you see the bird in time.
Just keep in mind that what’s going on inside that bird’s tiny mind may not be what you would consider rational decision-making.
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