At Sarasota airport, a unique kind of flight risk

SARASOTA — In the last 12 months, pilots leaving Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport have been involved in 21 bird strikes, six involving commercial aircraft.

None were emergencies, airport CEO and President Fredrick "Rick" Piccolo said.

Most were single-bird strikes, but mid-air encounters, like Sunday's involving a United Airline's passenger jet and a flock of birds, are less common and can have serious consequences.

In 2009, a much bigger U.S. Airways Flight 1549 hit a flock of Canada geese during ascent from New York's LaGuardia Airport and lost engine power. The flight, later dubbed "Miracle on the Hudson," made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. There were no injuries.

A United flight bound for San Francisco hit birds in March and safely landed at Tampa International Airport.

United Flight 3692 departed from Sarasota at 4:42 p.m. Sunday when it hit multiple sandpipers, a shorebird typically the size of a teacup, on takeoff. The pilot in command decided to return to the air field to inspect the windshield and nose cone for damage.

The plane, an Embraer 170, circled the airport six times in order to burn off enough fuel to get its weight down before landing. It landed at 5:18 p.m.

The birds were not ingested by the engines.

"In an abundance of caution, the pilot decided to come back to the airport to make sure there was no damage to the aircraft that was critical of the aircraft's operation," Piccolo said. "He never declared an emergency, so we didn’t have to have any firefighting equipment standing by. He did have to circle out in the Gulf for a little while to burn off some of the fuel."

The Embraer 170 can carry a maximum of 3,071 gallons of usable fuel, and its maximum takeoff weight is 85,098 pounds. It is recommended that the maximum landing weight be 73,414, a difference of 11,684 pounds.

Piccolo said the flight to Newark has a capacity of 70 passengers and is often full.

The recommended payload — a maximum of 21,480 pounds — is factored into the plane's landing weight. Commercial airliners often depart heavier than their landing weight because of fuel loads.

"If there had been a real emergency, if some kind of equipment, like one of the engines had gone out, he probably would have returned immediately to the field and landed with that excess weight," Piccolo said. "He had time, and there was no indication in the cockpit that there was any issue with the aircraft. It was more the pilot's decision to be very cautious and check the aircraft rather than say, 'I am not seeing any indication of problems, I'll just continue on to Newark.'"

An owl strike

Commercial pilot John Hill says the pilot followed the best safety practices with people on board, but he would have declared an emergency to clear the airspace for the fast-moving airliner.

Hill once was flying alone at night in Alabama when he struck an owl with a helicopter. His first reaction was to maintain control of the aircraft.

"That was a moment of stark terror as they say," said Hill, who flew two tours in Vietnam. "All of a sudden ka-thump. I’m lucky it didn’t come through the windshield."

The veteran pilot said the United Airlines captain and his co-pilot would have begun looking at procedures and checked his instrumentation after confirming control of the plane.

According to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.com, United Flight 3692 reached a maximum speed of 307 mph and circled at 4,000 feet after departure from Sarasota.

"In this case, there was no real emergency, but you just don’t know because you don’t have anybody out on the wing to tell you if you ingested a bird or a duck or whatever," said Hill, who compared a bird strike to sound of a compressor stall. "Compressor stalls come with a big bang. They are much more deadly than a bird strike."

United Flight 3692 landed and unloaded passengers while mechanics looked for damage. They reloaded two hours behind schedule and landed safely at Newark.

The FAA has reported 198,961 wildlife strikes between Jan. 1, 1990, to July 31, 2017. About 62 percent of bird strikes with civil aircraft occur during the day, 9 percent occur at dawn or dusk, and 29 percent occur at night, the FAA reports. Most encounters occur during landing. From 1990 to 2016, there were 262 human fatalities attributed to wildlife strikes around the world, the FAA reports.

Piccolo said retention areas and ponds that are plentiful in Florida raise the risk of strikes. The Airport is currently conducting a drainage study to see where they can cut down on ponds.

Piccolo said he uses pyrotechnic equipment, loud speakers and sirens, and bird distress calls are used to scare away birds from the airport.

"We do as much as we can to have animal deprivation without any harm," Piccolo said.