Last Friday, the New York Times reported that New York state officials were planning to trim the goose population in the state by about 170,000. According to the Times, the initiative arose from meetings following U.S. Airways Flight 1549, which made an emergency landing in the Hudson River after Canada geese flew into its engines. In the past ten years, there have been seventy-eight geese strikes on airplanes (or airplane strikes on geese, depending on how you look at it).
I e-mailed Michael Kalafatas, whose forthcoming book “Bird Strike: The Crash of the Boston Electra” traces the phenomenon from a deadly strike in the nineteen-sixties to the present day. Kalafatas, formerly the director of admissions at Brandeis University, kindly answered my questions on plane crashes, airborne dangers, and New York State’s plan.
Why did you write about the crash of the Boston Electra?
I wrote the book because I was fascinated with the crash and amazed that the story had never been treated at book length. Imagine: On a warm and golden afternoon, October 4, 1960, a Lockheed Electra jet turboprop carrying seventy-two souls took off from Logan airport. Seconds later, the plane slammed into a flock of 10,000 to 20,000 starlings, and abruptly plummeted into Winthrop Harbor. The collision took sixty-two lives and gave rise to the largest rescue mobilization in Boston’s history, which included civilians in addition to police, firefighters, skindivers, and Navy and Coast Guard air-sea rescue teams. Largely because of the quick action and good seamanship of Winthrop citizens, many of them boys in small boats, ten passengers survived what the Civil Aeronautics Board termed “a non-survivable crash.” At the time, although virtually surrounded by water, Logan had no water-rescue plan—their equipment sat useless at the end of the runway overlooking the harbor. The rescue and recovery mobilization exceeded even that of Boston’s 1942 Cocoanut Grove Nightclub fire, when nearly five hundred died. Three books had been written about the nightclub fire, yet none about the Electra crash.
The story had tugged at me since October 5, 1960, the day after the crash, when I was a senior at Boston English High School, and a classmate (a scuba diver) walked into class and announced he’d spent the previous evening pulling bodies out of Winthrop Harbor after a plane had crashed off Logan Airport.
What is your opinion on New York State’s plan to kill Canada geese in order to avoid further air strikes? Is this the right solution?
Air strikes are a clear-and-present danger. The reasons are many; here are just two. Thirteen of the fourteen largest birds found in North America have populations dramatically on the rise; any one of these birds is capable of shutting down a modern jet engine. Typically these birds fly in flocks—as was the case when U.S. Airways 1549 struck the flock of Canada geese. Also, in a quiet but dangerous revolution, in a generation the airlines shifted away from use of jetliners powered by three or four engines to jetliners powered by two engines. Ninety per cent of all Boeing deliveries today are twinjets. It is far easier for birds to disable a plane with two engines than one with four engines. Redundancy in jet engines raises probability that an aircraft is not left powerless after a bird strike and can make a safe emergency landing at an airport. It is noteworthy that the President of the United States flies in an airplane equipped with four engines, while we fly in twinjets.
As for New York State’s plan, my opinion is in the long run it will not work. Already it seems geese are returning to Prospect Park after the euthanizing of “the Prospect Park 400.” Also, why kill only 170,000? Why is that the magical goal? Why not kill all 250,000? If, as is true, a few wayward geese can strike another US Airways Airbus A320, and leave it powerless, what’s the magic in leaving behind 85,000? Given the lopsided shape to New York State, it defies logic that killing upstate geese will make a difference down state—where the high-traffic airports are located and the ones that inspired this action. I am no defender of geese (perhaps some should be killed, but that’s not at all clear to me even from reading the nine-page report prepared by government officials, as released by the Times); but, first, why do the geese carry all the blame? Has even one political leader stood up and asked the airlines why they are using two-engine airliners and, in so doing, leaving the travelling public vulnerable to strikes by any of the thirteen species of large birds whose populations are dramatically on the rise in North America? Or has the Mayor’s office expressed regret that several New York City dumps were thoughtlessly placed too close to its airports? (It is noteworthy that when Hitchcock filmed “The Birds,” most of the bird scenes were filmed at dumps, always loaded with birds.) What coöperation or compliance do city and state officials seek from businesses, located near airports, that attract birds or small animal life that, in turn, attract birds of prey?
I can’t tell how many geese should be killed to help protect airports, but it is unlikely that one state’s program of euthanizing can solve the problem. As one insightful person commented, as regards the killing of geese in Prospect Park, “Where does it all end?” The plan to euthanize in New York State was triggered by the emergency landing of U.S. Airways 1549. Can you imagine what happens if there are two successive catastrophic airliner crashes in different parts of the U.S., caused by bird strikes and involving huge loss of life? What will we propose: a national pogrom against Canada geese?
As recommended in my book, what is truly needed is a comprehensive program of risk management of bird and wildlife strikes. It needs to be one that is transparent and that people trust. It needs to be a national program that involves all 50 states. The plan I recommend is outlined in “Transport Canada’s Sharing the Skies.” Very briefly, but fully elaborated upon in “Bird Strike,” it offer three tiers of defense against damaging bird and wildlife strikes:
- First, reduce exposure to bird and other wildlife hazards;
- Second, reduce the probability of strikes; and
- Third, reduce the severity of strikes when they occur—as they inevitably will.
I am not against killing birds to reduce the threat of bird strikes, if it is part of an overall system-wide safety approach to reduce damaging bird strikes on aircraft. But I am against hanging everything on gassing birds as the prime and only solution. There is surely a pathway to safer skies for both air travelers and for birds.
I found some of the most interesting parts of the book to be those that documented the history of bird strikes. I had no idea that Wright brothers had encountered one of their own!
I wish I could tell you more about that, but all we have is that one short entry in the diaries of Orville and Wilbur Wright, September 7, 1905, that notes that Orville “flew 4,751 meters in 4 minutes 45 seconds, four complete circles. Twice passed over fence into Beard’s cornfield. Chased flock of birds for two rounds and killed one which fell on top of the upper surface and after a time fell off when swinging a sharp curve.”
Given the season and location, it’s likely that Orville struck a red-winged blackbird flying over Beard’s field to feed on the ripe corn. It was not significant since it caused the Wright brothers no problem; but they kept meticulous diaries, so they noted the event—probably not thinking much about it. Its significance, though, became evident on April 3, 1912, when Cal Rodgers crashed in the surf at Long Beach and died—after a gull had jammed the flight controls of his spruce-framed, linen-covered biplane. It was the first recorded death caused by bird strike. At the dawn of powered aviation, when the circle of those involved was small, Rodgers had been taught to fly by Orville Wright. It is ironic that Rodgers, despite being the first to fly across the U.S., a journey fraught with danger, was in the end killed by a common gull.
