Fewer strikes last quarter

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 1

Fewer strikes last quarter

The problem of bird strikes and near misses at Christchurch Airport is not as black as appears from figures published yesterday, says the airport director, Mr Hugh McCarroll. Statistics provided by the Civil Aviation Division of the Ministry of Transport in Wellington, showed that Christchurch had 14 bird strikes and 85 near misses in the last six months, a 33 per cent increase over the corresponding period in 1984.

Mr McCarroll said an analysis of the figures showed, however, a truer picture of what was being achieved with recently introduced bird control measures at the airport. The figures were tallied quarterly, he said. In the July to September period there had been 11 strikes and 61 near misses.

Since more stringent measures had been introduced figures had improved significantly, and in the October to December quarter there had been only three bird strikes and 24 near misses.

That was the lowest Octo-ber-December tally for five years and compared very favourably with the same period in 1984 when eight strikes and 24 near misses had been recorded.

Commenting on Christ-

church’s apparently high incident rate compared with Auckland and Wellington, Mr McCarroll said pilots were always more dutiful in reporting near misses at a particular airport after an incident such as the Boeing 747 bird-strike last July. The Civil Aviation manager at Christchurch, Mr John Laing, said the reported number of incidents at the airport were probably nearer the real situation, whereas pilots were less diligent in reporting near misses at Wellington and Auckland because the problem was not publicised as much there.