To Promote Reporting, FAA Wants Bird Strike Info Secret

The FAA wants bird strike information kept confidential to encourage accurate reporting by airlines, ABC News reports. “There is a serious potential that information related to bird strikes will not be submitted because of fear that the disclosure of raw data could unfairly cast unfounded aspersions on the submitter,” the agency wrote in a notice.

Pilots and experts alike were cautiously receptive. A pilot for US Airways, whose Flight 1549 set down in the Hudson River after a bird strike, said transparency was good but he would be open to the FAA’s argument. An expert said some secrecy was fine “if you need to for the sake of reporting, but with that comes an obligation to provide information back out of the system.” (More Federal Aviation Administration stories.)