"Seagull Slaughter at Kennedy Airport" (Op-Ed, May 30) 
by Alexander Brush of the New York City Parks Department 
argues that the birds should be scared away, not shot by 
the Department of Agriculture at the request of the Port 
Authority of New York and New Jersey. The article omits 
the greatest-ever loss of an aircraft to gulls at Kennedy 
International Airport or elsewhere. 

In 1975, an Overseas National Airways DC-10-30 was destroyed 
as the result of ingesting several gulls into one of its 
engines during its takeoff roll at Kennedy Airport. The 
resultant catastrophic explosive disintegration of the engine 
caused the wing and side of the aircraft to burn intensely 
even before the aircraft came to rest beyond the end of 
the runway. 

This disaster happened despite an extensive program to scare 
away the gulls that had been in effect for years. 

I was chairman of the airline and of the International Flight 
Safety Foundation at that time, and was at the crash scene 
within minutes. 

Fortunately, all aboard escaped without serious injury. 
However, we believe that everyone escaped only because the 
aircraft had only about one-third of a full load of passengers, 
all of whom were our employees, most of them crew members who 
received regular training in emergency evacuations. 

Had the gull ingestion occurred just after, it was assumed 
that the aircraft could not have successfully circled to land 
again before the wing would have failed, in which case all 
aboard would surely have perished. 

The case is widely known in the industry because a motion 
picture film of the aborted takeoff made from within the cockpit 
and a photo record of the evacuation from the burning aircraft 
by one of the first passengers out have been used as crew 
training aids by airlines throughout the world to demonstrate 
gull hazards and evacuation from a burning aircraft. 

The gull hazard is not limited to Kennedy Airport. It afflicts 
many of the world's busiest airports, perhaps most, because so 
many of the world's major metropolitan areas are near the sea. 

STEEDMAN HINCKLEY Orlean, Va., June 2, 1992
 
Sea Gull? There's No Such Bird as That; 
Takeoff Incident in '75 
 
Published: June 18, 1992