Eagle, Alaska Airlines jet collide near Petersburg
A collision between Alaska Airlines Flight 65 and a bald eagle Sunday killed the bird and delayed about 50 passengers traveling between Southeast Alaska, Anchorage and Seattle, Alaska Airlines officials said.
The flight, which leaves Seattle most days around 8 a.m., stops in Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg and Juneau before landing in Anchorage around 3 p.m. It was grounded in Petersburg shortly after noon Sunday.
The plane hit the eagle just before landing, said Rich Lowell, Petersburg area biologist for the Wildlife Conservation Division of the Department of Fish and Game. He examined the adult bird briefly Monday and believed itdied on impact.
Though airport managers in Southeast Alaska are authorized to conduct hazing activities to control bird populations near runways, bird collisions are impossible to avoid, Lowell said.
"We have lots of eagles around the community because we have canneries operating and that attracts prey species as well as eagles themselves," Lowell said.
Because the Petersburg airport, the canneries and eagle habitat share the same locale, "the eagle's luck just kind of ran out," Lowell said.
The landing of the aircraft was not affected by the collision, said Lou Cancelmi, vice president of corporate communications for Alaska Airlines. But the plane had to wait for a mechanic from Juneau to travel to Petersburg to assess the damage.
The mechanic found the dents slightly larger than the Federal Aviation Administration allows, so the plane had to wait for engineers from Boeing, the plane's manufacturer, to evaluate the situation, Cancelmi said.
The plane flew with no passengers to Anchorage, where the dents were in the process of being repaired Monday afternoon.
The airline rerouted other flights to accommodate about 50 passengers affected by the cancellation. By Monday, all of the passengers had reached their intended destinations, Cancelmi said.
Collisions with bald eagles are relatively infrequent for Alaska Airlines, although birds and planes occasionally do run into each other, Cancelmi said.
An eagle would be more likely to collide with a plane than some other birds because eagles, with a wing span of up to 7 1/2 feet, can be cumbersome and slow to react to obstacles, Lowell said.
But the only other eagle collision he has heard of in his three years at the division involved a small commuter plane in Kake.
Doug Jenny, the manager of the Petersburg airport, said he had not seen any bird collisions with aircraft in the eight years he's worked at the facility.