Jun 11, 2009 7:05 pm US/Eastern
NYC To Gas 2,000 Geese In Bid To Protect Aircraft
Hunt At Dozens Of Locations Near JFK, LaGuardia Planned To Avoid Bird Strikes; Hope Is To Avoid Repeat Of Flight 1549
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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A U.S. Air Force airport officer uses bird aircraft strike hazard pistol to scare away birds before a jet takes off.
AP
New York City plans to trap and kill up to 2,000 Canada Geese this summer in an attempt to avoid the type of collision that caused an airliner to ditch in the Hudson River last winter.
The hunt will take place on dozens of city properties located within five miles of Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
Aviation officials have culled the bird flocks on airport property for years, but this will mark a major expansion of the effort into other parts of the city, including about 40 public parks.
The roundup is being timed with the molting season, when the geese can't fly. It is scheduled to begin within a week.
Airplane collisions with birds have more than doubled at 13 major U.S. airports since 2000, and New York's Kennedy airport and Sacramento International report the most incidents with serious damage, according to Federal Aviation Administration data released for the first time Friday.
The FAA list of wildlife strikes, published on the Internet, details more than 89,000 incidents since 1990, including 28 cases since 2000 when a collision with a bird or other animal such as a deer on a runway was so severe that the aircraft was considered destroyed.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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