Voluntary Reporting Means Only a Small Percentage of Bird Strikes Get Recorded

Jan. 17, 2009— -- A lack of mandatory reporting procedures means no one really knows how many birds strike planes each year and where those incidents occur most often, according to aviation authorities.

Experts said only 20 percent of bird strikes are ever reported, and some airports are more conscientious than others about keeping track of them. This means what data is available may be skewed and thus be an unreliable indicator of which airport and airspaces have the greatest problems with wildlife incursions.

The Federal Aviation Administration maintains a list of bird strikes by airport but when contacted by ABCNews.com, the agency declined to release that information.

Bird strikes are in the public eye after the ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 Thursday in New York's Hudson River because of a bird strike in both engines of the Airbus A-310 jet. All 155 people onboard survived the flight, which originated at New York's LaGuardia airport.

Eastern Region spokesman Jim Peters told ABCNews.com today that the FAA has confidentiality agreements with the airports, the airlines and air traffic controllers. That agreement, he said, allows the FAA to collect information to improve safety and encourages accurate and timely reporting of incidents.

Such confidentiality, he said, means "we don't have to pull teeth to get the information." It also means the public can't get access to some types of safety data.

Archie Dickey, an Embry-Riddle Aviation University professor who prepared FAA's database but was not authorized to release the contents, said there's a feeling in the community that if airports report every bird strike they will be criticized for poor management.

And that makes the airport that does the best job of reporting look like the worst in aviation safety.

Airports are encouraged to report as many incidents as possible, said Sean Broderick, spokesman for the Virginia-based American Association of Airport Executives. But it is completely voluntary.

"Understanding the problem … means understanding what the birds are doing," he said.

According to the FAA, since 2000, at least 486 commercial aircraft have collided with birds, leading to 166 emergency landings and 66 aborted takeoffs.

"Nobody outside the airport or aviation world thinks about this stuff until something happens," Broderick said. His organization represents 850 airports in the United States.