LaHood to reject FAA secrecy on bird data
WASHINGTON -- The federal government is reversing itself and plans to release data on the thousands of incidents in which aircraft hit birds, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told USA TODAY Wednesday.
LaHood said the decision was reached Tuesday evening in a meeting with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials. It came after a 30-day public comment period yielded overwhelming opposition to a proposal to keep the incidents private.
The risk that growing populations of large birds create for commercial aviation has been in the spotlight since a US Airways flight struck a flock of Canada geese on Jan. 15, forcing the plane to make a dramatic splashdown in the Hudson River.
No one was killed, and only one person, a flight attendant, was injured, but the birds crippled the plane's engines.
After the crash, USA TODAY and other news outlets requested the FAA's database listing bird strikes and other aircraft collisions with wildlife.
The data contain more than 100,000 records and date back to 1990.
But on March 19, the FAA filed a notice that it intended to make the bird strike data off-limits from public inspection. The agency contended that airports and others would be less likely to make critical safety reports about birds if the data were widely disseminated.
The FAA's proposal prompted criticism from the news media and was overwhelmingly opposed in public comments filed with the government in response. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the US Airways accident, wrote that it "strongly disagrees" with the proposal.
The data are "critical to the analysis and mitigation of the wildlife strike problem," said the letter by NTSB acting Chairman Mark Rosenker.
USA TODAY, which obtained the data despite the agency's refusal to release the information, found that potentially dangerous incidents in which planes hit birds large enough to heavily damage engines had climbed dramatically since the 1990s. Populations of large birds such as geese, cormorants and pelicans have surged during that time.
