Animal-airplane interaction increasingly frequent, sometimes odd

If you happened to have flown into Florida's Melbourne International Airport a couple of weeks ago and you thought you saw four catfish walking down the runway, you weren't suffering from oxygen deprivation due to a slow decompression.

Apparently, Tropical Storm Fay dropped off a strange group of passengers - alligators, snakes, tortoises and those strolling catfish, which probably sounds pretty fishy. But these fish don't act like the proverbial fish out of water.

They use their fins to move along the ground and do swimmingly well. You might consider them a slightly scaled-down version of the flying fish which clearly has no landing rights at any international airport. But I digress.

Before any aircraft could land at the airport, the ground crew had to do some fishing of their own and move the critters off the runway. When animals and jet engines play contact sports, they both lose. In fact, fauna that takes up residence on airport property causes a chain reaction - a food chain reaction - and is a serious safety threat to aircraft.

It usually starts out with small rodents such as mice and bunnies, which aren't much of a problem to a large airplane. But larger animals and birds, such as coyotes and turkey vultures, that feed on those rodents, do major damage to a jet engine when it feeds on them.

Coyote sightings have caused delays at many major airports including Chicago O'Hare. Last year, at least two pilots were forced to abort landings because of coyotes dogging the runways at O'Hare.

At all the New York airports, the fur has been flying for a couple of years. It began when airport authorities discovered an unusually large number of feral cats had taken up residency on the airport grounds. While the felines may have cut down on the mouse population, many experts felt they had become an attraction to the large-bird population. And feathers fly when a turkey vulture plays chicken with a Boeing 747.

So, in the name of security, the cats are being grounded, before some jet engine does them in in a less humane way. This isn't a new problem. Eight years ago, a hunk of a KLM engine the size of a dishwasher fell from the sky over a beach near Los Angeles. Shortly after takeoff, one of the engines of the Boeing 747, broke into pieces and fell to the ground. No one was hurt and the plane was able to dump fuel and land safely in Los Angeles. But according to reports, the accident was caused by "fowl" play.

Apparently, a flock of birds flew into the engine. It cooked its goose.

According to FAA statistics, "feather benders" occur about 2,500 times each year and can be costly as well as dangerous. Bird strikes have accounted for nearly $50 million in damage since the early 90s. And it seems to be getting worse.

With urban areas increasing, animals and birds have to search harder for ground cover and food supplies. Airports offer them both.

And the animals are getting larger. Many airports are now dealing with herds of deer roaming their runways. Airports in India often have cattle grazing on airport grounds. Just this past spring, a moose evaded security and was doing laps at an airport in Norway. Fortunately, no planes were trying to take off or land at the time.

This summer, at a small private airport, a twin-engine Cessna hit a deer during landing. The deer died, but not before she gave birth to twin fawns. That may have turned out to be a 'deer' story, but it doesn't take away from the danger when animal meets aircraft, which is neither fish nor fowl.

Gail Todd, a free-lance writer,worked as a flight attendant for more than 30years. She can be reached via e-mail at gailtodd@aol.com.