Does the “Miracle on the Hudson” come to mind? Sure, there are a lot of us, but as time goes on, we tend to recall the incident but not the cause. Similar to this, in the year 2021 at Atlanta City International airport, a regional jetliner with 102 passengers on board aborted the takeoff, resulting in fire & significant damage. Reason? The Bird Strike was the cause of both of these occurrences.

White-tailed deer collisions have caused roughly 26 aircraft to be destroyed since 1990, according to statistics gathered with the FAA. Damage from wildlife (or bird) strikes throws the schedule off and depletes the operators’ cash.

Throughout, there is a significant safety and financial concern over wildlife strikes, which are defined as aircraft collisions with birds or other animals. Both airport operators and aircraft operators are facing more liability concerns as a result of wildlife strikes.

Authorities and governments are investing a significant amount of money in research to lower these occurrences. Yet, in order to support such research and analyze the incidents to counter this threat, it is necessary to efficiently & collectively collect data. Operators are urged by regulators to thoroughly document all such occurrences as part of the Safety Management System.

FlyPal-SMS-neo is a perfect application to record all bird strike/wildlife strike systematically to help the local regulator as well as aviators at large so that this menace could be avoided. In short, this application is an aid to analyze collated data for –

• Bird strike incidences Vs damage (Minor/Major/Catastrophic) for each calendar year.
• Analyze the data for airports within the country as related to number & type of damage.
• Analyze the activity of birds in a geography over a period to plot the trend.

Aviation safety is our concern. Does it concern you? 

By – Nitin Deshpande 

VP-Business Development & Customer success.