Posts about stuff relating to airports
Hashtag AAWHG 2022 Forum
Now that I’ve had a week to come down from an enormous couple of days at the Australian Aviation Wildlife Hazard Group’s (AAWHG) 2022 Forum, I thought I would share some of my highlights . The AAWHG Forum is the biennial migration of all manner of wildlife hazard management practitioners, researchers, consultants and stakeholders into a select location to discuss, present and chat about anything that relates to the intersection of aircraft and wildlife. But I haven’t the time to give you all a play by play. Instead, I’d like to share some of my bigger “take aways” and one big criticism.
Which Pipit to Report?
I was doing some research using the ATSB’s wildlife strike data file and came across a number of interesting little data artifacts. My goal was to maximise the number of reports with standard species names (common names, not the Latin) and this required a combination of Python programming and manual mapping.
And I found some interesting things, like the Richard’s Pipit.
Image credits: Richard’s Pipit (JJ Harrison via Wikipedia) & Australiasian Pipit (Sommerdrought via Wikipedia)
COVID-19 Bird Strike Update #3
It’s time for another update on the impact of COVID-19 traffic downturns on wildlife strikes. My first (and updated) post was looking at the initial months of the pandemic and the second looked at the northern summer period but it has been a big three months since I’ve looked at these numbers.
And in that time, someone published some statistics that don’t exactly match mine!
COVID-19 Bird Strike Update #2
It’s been a couple of months since my first attempt at tracking bird strike rates following the COVID-19 traffic downturn. At that time, viral infection rates in Europe had settled down, Australia was coming down from its second wave and even the US seemed to be cresting its second phase. On the aviation safety front, bird strike rates were showing a pretty clear sign of exceeding the 5-year average.
So how are things looking three months on?
Image credit: Alan Wilson (via Wikipedia)
(UPDATED) COVID-19 Bird Strike Update #1
UPDATE: What I thought was happening with wildlife strike rates during the COVID-19 downturn was not quite the case. I had a little issue with the time taken for reports to be included in the FAA Wildlife Strike Database and thankfully, this issue was picked up by a helpful colleague. See the details within.
Image credit: Azim Islam (via Pexels)
Heads Up: Watch Out for Wildlife (Updated)
No need to rehash the current situation, aviation is hurting and traffic numbers are going down.
So why post about wildlife strikes? With traffic down, we should see less strikes, shouldn’t we? Maybe not…
Over the last couple of months, I have been doing some deep diving into the FAA’s wildlife strike database. It is an aerodrome safety nerd’s paradise. There is so much data and a little crunching can reveal some very interesting things.
I want to share one of these insights with you in light our current circumstances.
Image credit: (cc) Quintin Gellar on Pexels
Off the Hook: Kangaroo Collision Case Appeal Allowed
A little over a year ago, I wrote about a court case involving the owner of an aircraft claiming damages from an aerodrome operator after their aircraft collided with a kangaroo on landing. I was pretty proud of that post as I had exercised some newly developed court judgement reading skills. So, of course, the legal system would have to go an turn all that on its head and change its mind. It turns out that the aerodrome operator was not liable for the damage.
Let’s find out why and whether we agree with them…
Image credit: Altered photo by Scott Calleja
Wildlife Risk Management Series
A long time ago I wrote a rather comprehensive series on wildlife hazard management within an ISO 31000 risk management framework. It was the launch series for the New Airport Insider website and quite a bit of work on my part - but I enjoyed it. So, I thought I would repackage it as a quick blog post with links to each article.
The $200K Kangaroo
I’m not a big fan of safety tropes. They are often repeated without much thought and eventually this repetition becomes detached from the concept the trope is trying to convey. With many tropes, there are few non-trivial or non-catastrophic events that can reinforce the trope.
The saying on my mind today is “if you think safety is expensive, try having an accident”. The “accident” I often think about is something big, something catastrophic and something that happens to other people. I rarely uttered this trope because I, personally, didn’t feel the power of it.
Now, thanks to a court case in Australia, I feel the power has been returned to this saying. We know have a non-catastrophic event with quantifiable costs associated with the “safety” part and the “accident” part. Plus, I think nearly every airport safety professional out there can empathise with the operator in the case