Large Transport; Low Wing; 2 Turbojet Eng
Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Bird / Animal
General None Reported / Taken
Aircraft; Environment - Non Weather Related; Procedure
First flight pre-flight walk around found evidence of a bird strike on the aircraft right side behind the radome. The appropriate [Maintenance Log] entry was made with Dispatch notified. Having not flown the aircraft in; I had no idea when or where the bird strike had happened. I got distracted with an APU MEL issue that culminated in an aircraft swap and as a consequence neglected to notify ATC of a bird strike event.[Pay] better attention to detail. Perhaps add a requirement for post flight walk arounds after each flight.
We were assigned an aircraft with the APU on MEL for our flight to JFK. My FO (First Officer) recalled that in the past at [other airlines] we had a limitation on flying into JFK without an APU due to JFK airport authorities ramp procedures limitations. However; we could not find any information in our current Jeppesen airport pages regarding that type of limitation. When calling my dispatcher he along with several others he queried in [Operations Control] knew of no limitations. However; my dispatcher dug deeper and found an airport operator NOTAM which stated that ramp personnel are not permitted to approach the aircraft until both engines are shut down. This Airport Operations NOTAM is not available to the pilots through [mobile information app]. We discussed the issue and determined that if this was indeed the case; with an inop APU; the only choice on arrival at the gate would be to shutdown both engine to battery power so as to allow the ground crew to approach the aircraft and connect ground power. In our case the issue was eventually rendered mute after this aircraft encountered another mechanical issue that took it out of service necessitating an aircraft swap to an airplane with a working APU.1. Is this airport authority ramp operations limitation applicable to [our company]?2. If so; add information to the JFK Jeppesen Company Airport pages regarding same.Airport ramp operations procedures that impact APU inop operations.
Air carrier flight crew reported finding evidence of bird strike on walk around and difficulties finding procedure limitations for their destination airport.