At RDU: Put tray tables up, watch for coyotes

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Pilot recalls 'major' RDU bird strike, and shrugs

Don Kirouac remembers his only serious bird strike in 30 years as a pilot, but he says air travelers shouldn't give it another thought.

He was approaching the runway at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on the night of Feb. 20, 1994, when a medium-size gull smashed the fiberglass radar dome on the nose of his American Airlines MD-80 jet.

"I do remember that one, because it actually caused a little bit of damage," Kirouac said Tuesday from his home in New Hampshire. "We were coming in very low. It didn't jeopardize our safety at all."

Big fight over flight

More than 100,000 snow geese and tundra swans are on their way back to northern Canada now, leaving behind their vast Eastern North Carolina winter home of peat bogs and pond pine, shimmering lakes and crushed corn stalks.

They'll return in the fall to the 113,000-acre Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, one of North America's most important winter retreats for migrating waterfowl. But by then, they may have new neighbors: the U.S. Navy.

Less than five miles from Pungo Lake, the heart of the refuge, the Navy plans to build a runway for fighter pilots to practice the pinpoint landings they must make on aircraft carriers. Dozens of times daily and nightly, the thunder of F/A-18 Super Hornets approaching the runway will roll across land that now echoes the growls of tractors and cries of geese.

Hudson River crash controller thought plane was doomed

WASHINGTON — Patrick Harten had a hard time shaking the image of tragedy well after the happy outcome of the Charlotte-bound plane that had been crippled by a flock of birds and disappeared from his radar. For a couple shocking moments, he had been assuming the worst.

Harten had worked about a dozen emergencies over the course of his 10-year career as an air traffic controller, so he knew the plane’s options. He began clearing runways for an emergency landing after hearing the engines were debilitated. What stunned him was to hear Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger say, "We're gonna be in the Hudson."

"I asked him to repeat himself, even though I heard him just fine," Harten testified Tuesday to the Aviation Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "I simply could not wrap my mind around those words. People don’t survive landings on the Hudson River. I thought it was his own death sentence.

Is there a better place?

PLYMOUTH--With landing gear lowered, the big, noisy Super Hornet jet slowed and swooped down on a Washington County cotton field as if to plop down on an aircraft-carrier deck.

About 200 feet from touchdown, it leveled off, powered up and roared away, clearing the way for another jet to repeat the maneuver.

The Navy staged the recent demonstration to show how pilots would practice landing F/A-18 Super Hornet jets at an airfield it wants to build there. Area residents trying to stop the project were unimpressed. They say a site miles from the ocean and near one of North America's most important winter retreats for migrating waterfowl is no place to mimic aircraft carrier landings. Plans would place the runway in an area at severe risk for bird strikes, which can damage aircraft or cause crashes.

American to end nine RDU flights

American Airlines is pulling the plug on nine flights at Raleigh-Durham International Airport as it focuses on expanding service at other, larger airports.

American, which offers more flights at RDU than any other airline, will no longer offer nonstops to St. Louis, Columbus, Ohio, or Hartford, Conn., after the cuts take effect next year. The airline also announced Thursday that it is cutting two flights to Boston, but it will still offer five flights to that city.

"Of course, we like to have as many cities as possible," airport spokeswoman Mindy Hamlin said. "We recognize in these tough times that airlines are having to make changes to their schedules."