Why we haven't heard much about bird strikes with such disastrous effect before? It looks like birds sucking into the engines regularly, nobody raised any concern. I think, jet engine can burn freely tons of them. Without big problems. I mean, good engines. But this time engines of this particular aircraft were not able to withstand additional burden of incoming poultry. So here we have two rather discouraging conclusions: 1) Nobody care about birds and, mainly, 2) Apparently not much care was exercised about condition of aircrafts. Striking similarity with fallen bridge in Minnesota and "sound condition" of US economy on the whole. Visible sign of ongoing recession. Sporadic heroism could not be a solution for system crisis.

Some new development. Investigators found remnants (leftovers) of birds inside the engine and now checking for maintenance records. This miracle saving by experienced and skilled pilot forcing us to wonder how many previous fatal crushes can be attributed to an actual bird strike despite official verdict?

Quite a bit actually. Birds strikes are very common. Airports and military air bases go to great lengths to avoid them. That is not to say that a bird strike means that a plane will go down immediately but it is certainly lethal for the bird and dangerous for the pilot and crew of the aircraft.