Safety
Firm moves bird avoidance from airport to airplane
The vice president of Bend, Ore.-based Precise Flight last month expressed disappointment with Peggy Gilligan, the FAA’s Associate Administrator for Aviati

The vice president of Bend, Ore.-based Precise Flight last month expressed disappointment with Peggy Gilligan, the FAA’s Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety, for failing to acknowledge the effectiveness of “on-aircraft” devices in deterring birdstrikes.

According to Scott Philiben, Gilligan’s February 29 testimony before the House of Representatives’ aviation subcommittee “highlighted strategies exclusive to the airport environment; our research has concentrated in on-airplane-based deterrent systems that would apply to both the airport and non-airport environments, and which would have been applicable to the strike that grounded Flight 1549, which occurred well outside the airport boundary.” On January 15, the pilots of US Airways Flight 1549 were forced to land an Airbus 320 in the Hudson River following a birdstrike that caused both engines to fail.

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