Low Flying Dung

[FlightlessParrot]

Not for the first time, a resident under the flight path of Auckland Airport is reported as complaining of deposits of what they assume is human crap dropped from aircraft: 'Poo' dumped on Auckland house - National - NZ Herald News

Without any knowledge, I have always assumed this is impossible from large aircraft, but could small aeroplanes engage in poo-strafing? She doesn't seem to be getting very definite answers from the authorities.

[SpringHeeledJack]

Isn't the poo from airliners stained from the blue chemical in the toilet system ?Maybe a squadron of large migrating birds all relieved themselves at once

[N707ZS]

This guy is wanted in Northern England by the police.
Poo-dunnit - police release picture after number two is found on bus seat (From The Northern Echo)

[FlightlessParrot]

?Maybe a squadron of large migrating birds all relieved themselves at once

That's the standard explanation, and it's spring, which is when the migrants return from Siberia, but the photo (if it's not a stock picture) suggests, as you say, large birds, and the biggest bird in the dense flocks is the godwit, and by the end of their flight (epic, in all truth) I don't think they'd have enough in the tank, as it were, to produce such a heavy bombardment. That stuff looks goose or swan calibre, and they don't fly in big flocks in Auckland. Not to mention the colour: goose turd green is a genuine colour name, by the way, and the picture definitely shows brown jobs.

[IBMJunkman]

Maybe it has finally happened?

File:Sus scrofa avionica.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[FlightlessParrot]

Maybe it has finally happened?

But that's a concept picture for the sus scrofa avionica 380NEO.

[Capetonian]

[onetrack]

I can recall a story related to me by a U.S. friend who owned a Citabria, about how he took his 19 yr old son along as pax when he went on a cross-country jaunt.
Having just levelled off at FL120, son immediately says, "Oooohh, Dad, I gotta go! - urgently! - I shouldn't have wolfed that big greasy hamburger before we took off!"

Dad immediately berates him about not "going" before he left - and explains that it just took him 20 mins to reach FL120 and he isn't going to try and find an airstrip and put down and waste all that time and fuel, just because son wants a crap! - he can "go" in a plastic shopping bag, and throw it out the window!!

Son complains, but does the deed - and Dad relates about how he "stunk the plane out, like you wouldn't believe!!" Son slides open the window a little and hurls the offending waste out as best he can into the slipstream - whereupon the bag immediately becomes entangled around the tailplane!!

Dad then relates how he carried out some fancy aerobatics to try and shake the offending bag off - which he finally succeeds in doing!
However, back on the ground, someone probably got narrowly missed by a flying turd in a plastic bag from space!!

[Piltdown Man]

Flat Bush is approx 6nm from Auckland and almost under the approach path for 23L/R. An aircraft performing a normal approach would be about 2,000 above Flat Bush, travelling at what - say 170 kts or so? And Karen Bass is suggesting that an airliner has liquified the contents of it's foul storage tanks, removed the "blue" and then dumped it whilst on approach to Auckland.

Now I'll not argue that it smelt human or that it even was, but I do not know of an aircraft that mashes the stuff up, removes the blue and the dumps the result. Also, hurling liquid fecal matter into the airstream at 170kts from 2,000' would give a wider dispersion than what we see here. And was 23L/R in use that evening? Looking at the METARS, they suggest 05 might have been in use.

I'll not say it never happened but stories like this have not routinely appeared in the rest of the world. Furthermore, I truly wish I had the ability to drop the stuff but there is no such system fitted to any aircraft I've flown. The controls for dumping are external.

I think Ms. Bush has to look elsewhere for the source because I am convinced it was not an aircraft. It's just a shame that this story was not properly researched before it got to print. Unfortunately, she is probably under the illusion that it has to be an airliner and because it fits her mental model, therefore she must be right and will waste her time looking in the wrong direction. What a shame.

PM