Birdstrikes by phase of flight

On an early morning approach into Cairns Aerodrome, Qld an Airbus A330 ingested an animal into the number one engine. The approach and subsequent landing continued unaffected. A borascope inspection of the engine recovered pieces of a flying fox.

(17 June 2013)

3.5 Birdstrikes by time of day

Birdstrikes are most common across most locations between 0730 and 1030 each morning, reducing to a low strike period in the early afternoon between about 1330 to 1430. An increase in birdstrikes is seen again in the dusk and evening twilight periods between 1800 and 2000 at night, steadily reducing after this time to the lowest period in the early hours of the morning (between 0130 and 0400).

In general, the likelihood for a birdstrike is determined by the bird activity and aircraft activity in and around airports. Major airports in particular have week-day peak movement times in the mornings and evenings, which heavily influence the twin peaks seen in Figure .

The peak times for birdstrikes are also shown by bird species in Table on page 130. Additionally, Appendix B – Hourly birdstrikes counts and rates, 2010 - 2013 on page 79 shows the both the hourly birdstrike counts as well as the rate of birdstrikes per 10,000 movements for the ten major aerodromes. Also shown are the rates and counts for each of the top three species struck (where species is known) for these ten aerodromes. Due to a number of data anomalies and the high sensitivity of the rate at low count values, data between midnight and 2 am have been excluded.

Figure : Number of birdstrikes by time of day, aggregated for the 2004-2013 period

4. Birdstrikes in Australian states and territories

The ‘Unknown’ field in Table indicates birdstrikes where it could not be determined where the strike occurred.

The number of birdstrikes in each state over the reporting period is directly related to:

the number of aerodromes in that state

the particular bird species and environments available, and the bird population

the number of air traffic movements into each airport.

These factors are considered and reviewed further in later chapters

Table : Number of birdstrikes per year by state, 2004 to 2013

In descending order, Australian Territorial Islands (denoted as ‘Other’), Western Australia, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory had the highest percentage increase in the last 2 years when compared with the 10-year average. It is important to note that very few birdstrikes occurred in the ACT or in the Australian Territorial Islands over the last 10 years.

Figure : Average birdstrikes per year by state, 2004 to 2013

Table (below) shows birdstrikes by season and by state. Considering all states, July has the lowest number of birdstrikes on average, with only 5.5 per cent of the yearly average for the 10-year period. In comparison, almost 10 per cent occurred in both October and December. There was some variability observed across all states; however, most have one or two distinct peaks.

To provide further detail into the monthly birdstrikes across the country, aircraft movement data has been obtained for thirty aerodromes for the 10-year period between 2004 and 2013. With these data the normalised averaged monthly rate of birdstrikes for all major, regional class D and metropolitan class D aerodromes is provided in Appendix B – Hourly birdstrikes counts and rates, 2010 - 2013 on page 79. Within each of the three aerodrome groups the vertical axis scale remains constant to facilitate a qualitative comparison between similar aerodromes.

Figure : Percentage of total yearly reported birdstrikes occurring each month by state, averaged for the 2004 - 2013 period

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