Matthew Coffelt shoots an M-80 into the air over the 5th Runway trying to scare birds away.
A flock of potentially dangerous birds over the runways at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport.
ATLANTA -- Delta Air Lines Flight 1472 had just taken off Monday morning from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport -- 142 passengers headed to Columbus, Ohio.
"We were gaining altitude," passenger Joe Sindorf recalled of the first few moments of the flight. He said he and other passengers quickly realized something wasn't right.
"The section I was sitting in felt this real bump, a thud," he said. "You could feel it and hear it. There was a little bit of a vibration to the plane. The plane tended to slope a little bit to the left."
Then the pilot announced that a bird had flown into the plane's left engine, and had disabled the engine.
The pilot turned back, and landed safely.
"Bird strikes do occur at this airport and every other airport," said a matter-of-fact Matthew Coffelt of Hartsfield-Jackson.
In fact, according to the FAA, birds and other wildlife collide with planes across the U.S. an average of 26 times a day.
"This was a major, wildlife hazard," Coffelt said of Hartsfield-Jackson's wildlife population a few years ago.
Coffelt's mission for the past five years has been to try to keep the wildlife away from Hartsfield-Jackson.
He and others from airport operations are constantly patrolling the airport's fenced, 4,700 acres, parts of which remain undeveloped woods and grasslands.
They keep a database of every, single sighting of birds and mammals on the property, and of their efforts to scare away and/or trap those that might pose risks to airliners.
The FAA requires Hartsfield-Jackson and all other U.S. airports to have aggressive "wildlife mitigation" programs.
One of the tools used at Hartsfield-Jackson involves pyrotechnics -- such as dozens of cannons positioned along the runways, automatically shooting loud blanks, at random; and pistols that Coffelt uses to launch M-80 firecrackers that explode in the air. They scare away flocks of starlings and other birds.
And there are electronic noisemakers placed throughout the property that emit bird distress calls, off and on, day in and day out, mirroring the various birds' hunting and feeding schedules.
In the woods along the headwaters of the Flint River, just off of the east end of the runways, "we have actually trapped coyote before," Coffelt said. The coyote feed off of rabbits, foxes and field mice in those woods.
Coffelt and his contract trappers have also captured deer and, many times, rescued stray dogs and cats that have somehow found their way past the fencing and onto airport property.
The airport follows a strict catch-and-release policy -- releasing the wildlife far away from the airport.
The preventative measures focus on reducing wildlife "attractants." For example, the types of grasses and clover planted along the runways repel, instead of attract, hungry wildlife, "ultimately to keep the thousands of passengers that come in and out of Hartsfield everyday safe," Coffelt said.
One of Coffelt's accomplishments was when he able to move, off of airport property, the equipment that steams and sanitizes all trash from the planes arriving from outside the U.S. prior to delivery to U.S. landfills. That operation had once been located on airport property adjacent to the north runways, next to Runway 26 Right.
"So we had birds that would just come, en masse, to this area," Coffelt said.
Not anymore.
Coffelt often spots red tailed hawks making their homes on airport property, but he said they never conflict with airport operations.
"They're the only species known that actually adapts to the flight patterns of the aircraft," he said. "They'll actually soar right around here and play around in the thermals."
So, because they stay away from the planes, he leaves them alone. "Let a sleeping dog lie, so to speak, in this case, at least," he said.
As for the latest bird-strike that disabled the passenger jet's left engine, the one on Monday morning -- it occurred not over Hartsfield-Jackson airport, but miles away.
"And everything worked out fine," passenger Joe Sindorf said. "The pilot did a great job."