Looking at Planes with a Bird's Eye View

Guest: Esteban Fernandez-Juricic, Professor of Biology, Purdue University In January 2009, US Airways flight 1549 took off from New York’s La Guardia airport and suddenly hit a flock of geese. Both the plane’s engines went out with the bird strike and the pilot had to land the aircraft in the Hudson River. Miraculously, no one died. In the last 25 years, 262 human fatalities have been attributed to collisions between planes and wildlife worldwide. Bird strikes are the most common of these and they cost the aviation industry hundreds of millions of dollars each year.