With the recent news of a bird damaging Oprah Winfrey’s airplane bringing to light the common incidences of airplane meets bird, Airport Business reports “In Jet-Bird Collisions, Planes Rarely Losers”.
Two airliners were forced to make emergency landings at Bradley International Airport recently after hitting some birds on takeoff, but the problem of bird strikes in aviation didn’t start with the jet age.
It began a century ago with Orville Wright.
It was September 1905, two years after the Wright Brothers first achieved powered flight at Kitty Hawk. Orville was cruising over a cornfield near the family home in Dayton, Ohio, when he reported hitting a bird, said Richard Dolbeer, a federal official who heads a bird strike advisory committee for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Wright was doing circles, chasing the birds, and whacked one, according to his diary. It landed dead on the upper wing.
