USA make bird strike reports mandatory
Thursday, Apr 23rd 2009 18:56Z
The United States Department of Transport decided, that bird strike reports will be mandatory in the future.
At the same time the data base about bird strikes will be published and remains in public despite proposals by the FAA to restrict access to the data.
The FAA had argued following the ditching of US flight 1549 in the Hudson River at New York in January this year and strongly increased media interest in bird strike data, that bird strike reports were voluntary. Exposure of the data in the wide public and associated media coverage could lead to potential harm to the airlines in public perceiption, so that airlines would no longer report their bird encounters leading to loss of critical data needed for regulators and aviation safety officials to uphold aviation safety.
The NTSB objected the proposal stating that "public access to all the data in the FAA Wildlife Strike Database is critical to the analysis and mitigation of the wildlife strike problem...".