Bird Brained

The events of US Airways Flight 1549 put the spotlight on the FAA and the potentially deadly consequences of bird strikes on planes. Thousands of bird strikes have been reported in recent years, and yet the FAA now seeks to keep that information secret because it believes that the public can't comprehend what that actually means or the risks involved.

Now, we learn that the Port Authority has been lying about just how many bird strikes have been occuring at area airports. Far from reducing the number of bird strikes in the past couple of years, the number of incidents has risen to nearly 1 per day.

The Post's Bill Sanderson reported the real facts on Monday: Plane-fowl collisions at JFK, Newark and La Guardia shot up 60 percent between 2003 and 2007, the last year for which full data are available.

The latest figure, 361, comes to nearly one bird strike per day.

The PA now says it made a "mistake."

No kidding.

But how much do you want to bet that "mistake" would've never happened if the PA had been paying attention in the first place?

Certainly, the PA had good reason to. Experts say that the country's population of Canada geese -- the most dangerous winged offender -- has grown 400 per cent since 1990.

And while not every bird strike brings down an airplane -- obviously -- many, if not most, of them have the potential to do so. The results could be catastrophic.

Indeed, but for Capt. Chesley Sullenberger's singular skills, they would have surely killed all 155 people aboard his plane.

The geese need to go. Now.

Alas, early signs indicate that the authorities still aren't taking the goose menace seriously.

The authorities aren't taking the problem seriously enough and probably wont until there is a deadly accident. But for Chesley Sullenberger's tremendous flying skills, all aboard his plane could have died from the bird strike.

Are bird strikes completely avoidable? Not in the slightest. However, the Port Authority and the FAA must take better steps to manage the risk, and that means dealing with the overpopulation of Canadian geese in the NYC metro area before they do bring a plane down and the pilot and passengers aren't nearly so lucky. That means culling local populations of Canadian geese and doing a better job of reducing birds in and around the local airports. That's a particularly difficult task at JFK given that it is adjacent to the Gateway National Wildlife Refuge, which is an important stop on the Atlantic Coastal flyway.

It also means more effort to track bird flocks in and around the region to steer planes away from potential danger.