Hares and birds regularly hit planes at Dublin airport

Fifty-four incidents reported this year

Hares are a problem at Dublin Airport (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Dublin Airport is plagued by bird and hare strikes more than once a week, according to new figures.

There have been 54 incidents so far this year, Dublin Live discovered after submitting an Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) request.

The majority of these were bird strikes, with 43 reports of birds hitting planes during take-off or landing since January 2019.

Meanwhile, there have been 11 cases of hares that live near the airport runways hitting aircraft.

These animals who wandered too close to planes on the runway end up being a hazard.

The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) struggles so much with problems created by wildlife that it legally shot 55 hares in 2018. However, no shoots have taken place so far in 2019.

It also uses humane methods of reducing the wildlife population – this year 44 hares have been caught and re-released in Kildare and Wicklow.

Wildlife is also deterred through “bird-scaring activities”: using hawk kites to deter small birds, and “humming lines”, which make a noise in the wind.

Using a combination of tactics has seen the DAA reduce the number of bird strikes and hare incidents from 102 in 2018 to 54 to date this year.

A DAA spokesperson said: “Safety is our number one priority for customers and staff using Dublin Airport.

“We are working daily to maintain the highest levels of safety and to meet key regulatory requirements. All wildlife in the vicinity of the airport has to be proactively managed to minimise the risk to aviation.”

It follows a plane having to make an emergency landing when it was struck by a flock of birds shortly after take-off.

Swoop Airlines flight 312, which took off from Abbotsford in British Columbia, Canada, in September 2019, returned to the airport when it hit a flock of geese.

Passenger Donna-Lee Rayner posted on Facebook about the flight, which was en route to Edmonton, in the province of Alberta.

“Board the plane all is well. Take off happens and all of the sudden this loud thud thud thud thud happens... smoke in the cabin and the smell of burning,” she said.

She added that cabin crew said over the intercom that one of the engines “sucked up some geese” and the smell in the cabin was the birds “getting cooked”.