FAA Wants to Hide the Info About Planes Hitting Birds

Airplanes, by the nature of "flying," tend to deal with birds a lot. It's part of the business; I think everyone understands that.

However, since the airlines haven't come up with any radar to detect said birds yet, it's always helpful to know, as a consumer of airline products, just how often airplanes are running ... a fowl. (Sorry.) But, it would appear that the FAA wants to hide this information from consumers to avoid a national panic.

The government agency argued that some carriers and airports would stop reporting incidents for fear the public would misinterpret the data and hold it against them. The reporting is voluntary because the FAA rejected a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation 10 years ago to make it mandatory.

And it should be voluntary. There's absolutely no reason why the FAA should be able to hide this information from the public, considering that it lacks any real terrifying news. Everyone and their brother knows that birds and airplanes are in the skies together.

Attempting to quash this info from the public just serves to damage the reputation of the government and make the FAA look like an organization that has something to hide.

From the "About Time" Dept: Radar May Check for Flocks of Birds

Remember that whole "Plane takes off," "Goose flies in engine," "engine catches on fire," "Plane lands in Hudson River" sequence that happened two weeks ago? (Answer: of course you do.)

Well, the whole thing could have been avoided by simply having radar to detect flocks of birds. Which someone is working on, apparently.

Federal aviation officials say a handful of U.S. airports will soon begin testing experimental radar systems designed to track flocks of birds.

The new technology can monitor birds as far as six miles away from an airfield. It's being tested at airports in Seattle, Chicago and Dallas.

Oh, wow! That's awesome! Except ... WHY DON'T WE ALREADY HAVE THIS? Seriously, airplane people: you have technological systems that allow planes to land themselves, and yet, you can't figure out when a giant group of birds, flying together (likely south, or possibly north) are headed towards an airplane, which is, by the way, also a giant metal object. Sigh.