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"If the US Airways flight that yesterday took off from La Guardia and got only as far as the Hudson River suffered the \"double bird strike\" claimed by its pilot, it would just be the latest incidence of a two-pound creature downing a 91,000-pound plane. The Bird Strike Committee USA (yes, such a body exists) claims that bird-to-plane collisions cost the civil and military aviation industries $600 million annually and have resulted in 219 fatalities in the past 20 years.Some \"fun\" facts from the BSC-USA's Web site: A 12-lb Canada goose struck by a 150-mph\naircraft at liftoff generates the force of a 1,000-lb weight dropped from a\nheight of 10 feet;More than 5,000 bird strikes were reported by the\nU.S. Air Force in 2007 and U.S. civil airlines reported 7,600 bird and animal-related accidents;In 1890, about 60 European starlings were\nreleased in Central Park, New York\nCity.&amp;nbsp; Starlings are now the second\nmost abundant bird in North America, with a late-summer\npopulation of more than 150 million birds.&amp;nbsp;\nStarlings are \"feathered bullets,\" having a body density 27 percent\nhigher than herring gulls.Locally, the issue of bird strikes was last in the news in September 2007, when a crippled Virgin America flight pulled into San Francisco International Airport for an emergency landing (of note: That plane was named \"Air Colbert\" after Stephen Colbert."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://archives.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/01/16/flipping-the-bird-local-airports-methods-of-repelling-winged-obstacles>