By: Maya Valerio & Lauren Mariani

US Airways flight 1549 departed from La Guardia Airport. Complications occurred shortly after takeoff when both engines were damaged and unable to function, as a result of a collision with geese. The pilot conducted an emergency landing in the Hudson River.

Maya: Mr. Valerio, could you please state your name and occupation Freddy Valerio: Yea, my name is Freddy Valerio I work for the safety assurance group in the eastern service area in Atlanta, one of my job responsibilities is to analyze accident information in the office that I work for. Maya: Of all the three major airports in the New York City area which has the most bird strikes with airplanes and why? Freddy Valerio: Well we really don’t go by that, bird accidents usually occur in all the metropolitan airports and they are at different rates because of different migratory aspects of birds so we really don’t know who is going to have more than the other, I could say Kennedy because it has more land, airspace, that’s near the water, they may have more reports of bird activity than lets say Newark or LaGuardia, but each of them have different migratory corridors for birds to fly through. So we get reports of accidents all the time from all of them, so we just cant say which one has the most. Maya: Okay Thank you, and the next question, in reference to the recent Hudson river plane crash we would like to know why the collision occurred and what kind of bird their plane collided with? Freddy Valerio: Well initially we didn’t know what type of bird it was and later we found out it was geese that caused the accident, and the reason the accident occurred was because after the airplane departed from LaGuardia airport the large migration of bird that the airplane hit mainly were the jet engines and that airplane was an airbus that had only two engines so both engines received multiple impacts of birds and because of that it shut both engines down and that’s what caused the accident to occur and finally where the plane ended up in the Hudson river.

Lauren: Okay so the other thing we’d like to know is, is there any way of knowing when these strikes will occur like for example can what altitude the birds fly at or can the radar pick up signs of the birds? Freddy Valerio: Well, at different airports they use different equipment or they use devices to either prevent or detect the migratory patterns of the birds. If there is a large flock of birds flying through the airport and it is visually seen by the pilot it gets reported to the tower, and we have the ability to put on our hourly weather recordings that information, that please use caution in the vicinity of the airport for multiple birds and in the airport. So other places, they use, like Kennedy airport port authority uses hawks to scare birds from the airport grounds and not allow them to be near airplanes. Also at LaGuardia they use flare guns or guns with blank bullets sounds Lauren: And finally, how can these strikes be prevented and what different measures can we take in order to prevent these birds from colliding with the planes? Freddy Valerio: Well the agency uses different approaches to detect and inform the flying public of the birds, and most airports, we use hourly weather recordings on the broadcast that multiple birds are migrating through the vicinity of the airport. Some airports also, when they have large bodies of birds within the airport grounds, they use different tools to get the birds away from the airports, in some locations they use flare guns or guns with blank bullets, sounds, and in some cases, like Kennedy airport, they use hawks, special trained hawks that would scare the birds away from the proximity of airplanes in the airport grounds. Lauren: Okay thank you very much. We really appreciate this interview and it was nice meeting you. Lauren: Okay and next we’d like to ask you a couple of questions to determine why these air strikes occur and how they can be prevented. So the first question is when do these air strikes occur, is it during take off or landing of the airplanes and what factors come into play that cause birds to collide with the planes? Freddy Valerio: Well the cause of the aircraft accident occur at different levels or phases of airplane operation, a lot of times they occur on the departure phase of an airplane, which is the most critical part of the airplane phase for impacting birds because if an airplane loses an engine while on takeoff, normally an airplane requires to have full power to be able to climb, so if its got two engines and one engine goes dead it may be a critical point in its departure, if both engines quit, like the one in the Hudson, then it becomes a serious matter, so the phase of flight it really applies in all aspects of airplane flight, it can happen in departure, in can happen during approaches, which is the landing phase, and they both can be severe, depending on the situation. A lot of times it happens and it may just impact on the body of the airplane leading edge, but whenever you hear cases where the engines are shut down is because their may have been multiple birds or geese that go inside the engine and cause it to shut down. And what was the other question again?

It is difficult to determine when and where a collision will occur due to the many factors that come into play. Therefore, it is more effective to use tactics that prevent collisions. Broadcasts of bird migrations are frequently updated on the hour, in order to tell when birds are coming through airports. Guns that fire blank rounds and other loud sounds are used to scare the birds away from the airport grounds.

A shooting program was implemented to kill geese that were frequently seem flying over the area. In 1996, JFK implemented a falconry program to compliment the shooting program. The falcons were trained to scare geese and other nuisance birds away.

Slide 1: Photo Credit- Department of Environmental Conservation  Slide 2: Simulation Source- Freddy Valerio  Slide 3: Wald, Matthew L. and Liz Robbins. “River Is Searched for Clues to Crash.” The New York Times. 16, January Photo Credit- Xinhua/Reuters Photos.  Slide 4 & 5: Audio Interview-Freddy Valerio, FAA Investigator  Slide 6: Freddy Valerio-Interview  Slide 7: Barras, Scott C., Richard C. Chipman, and Richard A. Dolbeer. “Integrated Management Program to Reduce Bird Strikes at JFK International Airport, ” USDA Wildlife Services.