There've been bird strikes as long as there have been planes. This happens all the time, and until the recent incident made it famous and scary it just wasn't mentioned.

A plane in the same situation a few months back probably would have simply landed without the crew saying anything to the passengers about birds. Maybe they'd apologize for "turbulence." If they did choose to mention that they'd hit a bird on the way down, nobody would have called the press to report it. If anyone did, nobody in the press would bother to cover it. It would have just been an interesting story for the passengers to tell to the people picking them up at the airport.

But thanks to one long-shot freak occurrence a few months back, it's now something to sensationalize.

I guess you don't realize that the geese population doubles every five years. Yes there have been bird strikes in the past and other than a cracked windshield or a dented part, no one took notice of it.

Now lets say the same situation with pigeons or rats kept doubling their population every five years and when you walked out every morning a pigeon shit on your head, not once but twice while you are going to the subway. Would you be concerned?

Meanwhile while you are at work several rats decided to eat the entire contents of your pantry so when you came home you thought that old mother Hubbard had the keys to your apartment. Then would you be concerned about the ongoing problem?

Killing the geese doesn't solve anything or make the sky safer. Change the habitat and it will resolve a lot of the issues. Also report Snoopy because this guy who talks about his desire for his hottie 14 year old hottie neighbor is hogging up this whole site with his stupid remarks

OK I lied. Bass don't start breeding until mid May.

I must say if anyone should be eliminated from this site it is you. You have droned on for weeks about saving the geese and have yet to make a viable alternative to eliminating the pest other than killing them in large quantities. I'm not talking 2000, I'm talking 20,000 a year.

In addition you keep misquoting a previous remark I made which has nothing to do with the present issue.

Can you please state a solution to the ongoing, doubling of the geese pest every five years? You can't because you think spraying and loud noise generating devices will eliminate the problem.

Again. If you like, I will invite you out to my place in PA with a one acre pond in the back in late March so you can addle the eggs of my resident geese. I will provide the row boat so you can go out to the island and do same. But when you piss in your pants and sink the boat because the male goose attacked you, I will say "Great! More food for the bass and perch when they start breeding in mid April.

Yeah. If they really gave a crap about bird strikes, they'd put grates in front of the jet intakes so that the birds couldn't be sucked into the engines.

But that would just be common sense, something that seems to be nearly extinct these days.

maybe you should start paying attention, dumb person, nothing that could stop birds from getting in the engine would work because it would ice up and stop the air flow.

Great contribution btw, you've made smart people everywhere proud.

Say if they do put grates on the front of jet engines so they don't suck up the birds. After hitting a flock of geese the grate gets clogged. Grate gets clogged. No air to engine, airplane loses power, airplane crashes into a residential area of highrise buildings on the upper east side killing all aboard the plane and 700 on the ground.

Please donate to Geesepeace.org, or better yet the NRA.

According to the geesepeace org the goose population is doubling every five years.

I am still waiting for a reasonable solution. Geese are hardly an endangered species.

Moving them away from point A to point B is not a viable solution. And thinking that felixthecat2 and his friends at geesepeace will be addling the eggs in their nests is almost as realistic as asking the government of Israel to buy their electric power from Iran to support world peace.

Much as I hate to agree with idiot Felix, he's right. We're not going to fix the problem by killing the birds - more will just move in. When you have a desirable habitat for a wild animal - especially a wild animal that can fly - you're never going to keep the animals away unless you come up with a way to make that habitat less desirable. Killing them is just dumb and a waste of time.

Give us a viable solution to making those areas less "tasty" for the geese. Just one will be fine.

Frankly, I don't think there is a viable solution. Bird strikes have always been and always will be a threat to aviation. There are things you can do to make park space less appealing to birds like geese - for instance, getting rid of water features. But is anyone ever going to do that? No. Killing these geese is just like using 3-oz containers on the planes; it makes the fools and tools feel safe, while actually doing nothing for real safety whatsoever.

That's easy -- close LaGuardia: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/want-to-fix-new-york-air-congestion-shut-down-laguardia/

In addition to the bird strike problem, "...the airspace for each of the three airports extends cylindrically into the sky above its ground position. Because of their relative proximity, the three airspace cylinders affect one another significantly, which creates congestion not just because of volume but because pilots have to thread the needle and fly needlessly intricate approach routes in order to comply.

If the LaGuardia cylinder were eliminated ... Newark and J.F.K. would both operate much more freely — and, since LaGuardia handles far less traffic than the other two airports, it is the obvious choice for shuttering."

We could two birds with one stone! Hyuk.

A. There are more bird strikes at JFK than LGA.

B. LGA's flights would not just disappear, they'd just migrate to the other airports, creating more bird strike opportunities in and around them.

C. The other airports could not add all of LGA's traffic to their existing flights anyway.

D. This will never ever happen for a whole list of reasons.

If you notice all three airports are maxed out and their arrival and departure times are way below what some consider acceptable. Eliminating one airport from the loop will only cause even more delays.

How about closing all area airports when the geese are in a flight mode pattern. Like from about the middle of July through early June.

What is a natural predator of geese? Can't we just do that so instead of us killing them, it's nature doing the killing?

Third Term Bloombergs are a goose's worst nightmare but there are too few left in the wild and the Bloomberg captive breeding program failed due to weal bloodlines. That's why we have to resort to a man-made Final Solution...

Yes, planes...

and they could sell tickets to watch! :-)

Actually, I think it would be too boring... no tickets then...

besides killing them all (which may be fun) how about the airlines design some type of "cattle catcher" implement for the front of the plane?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3143/2795811298_df9b9bc7e6.jpg?v=0