Transportation Secretary plans to out bird strikes
Bird strikes. The phrase entered most Americans vocabulary when Captain “Sully” Sullenberg landed an American Airlines plane on the Hudson River after the plane hit a flock of ill-fated geese. Since then, the Federal Aviation Association has proposed keeping information about bird strikes including where and when they happen, secret. Presumably on the grounds that for pilots, hitting a bird is like a car hitting a squirrel. Tragic, but it happens. Yesterday Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood scrapped that. He says the public has a right to know. Bruce Holmes worked on air transportation systems at NASA Langley Research Center. He joins us now with his take on the move towards bird strike transparency.
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