Free from bird hits
in 1975, a dc -10 taking off from New York City's John F Kennedy airport lost one of its three engines when it ran into a flock of seagulls. The plane slid off the runway and caught fire, but no one was hurt. The passengers of a Boeing 707, however, were not so lucky. Four years ago, this plane struck a flock of geese during takeoff; it lost two of its four engines and crashed. All 24 people on board were killed.
There are numerous such instances reported all over the world. Every year in the us, pilots report more than 5,000 bird strikes that cause more than us $400 million in damages to commercial and military aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration ( faa), which has been experimenting with everything