Over 80,000 Birds Collided with US Aircraft Since 1990
The US Federal Aviation Administration released a document as a companion to their
online wildlife strike database. The numbers for both the research document and the database could be off by 80%, as the website states only about 20% of wildlife strikes are reported. So the number of bird strikes and animal strikes could be much higher. (The data has been entered only up to Dec. 2008 perhaps due to collection difficulties).
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The report states that since 1988 219 people have died and over 200 planes have been destroyed by due to impacts with wildlife. The largest deadly bird-related plane crash took place near Boston when flight 375 flew through a flock of starlings. Sixty-two people died in that crash.
The database was made public to share information, and partly as a result of the commercial jetliner that went down in the Hudston River after hitting a number of geese.
JFK airport in New York leads the country in bird strikes with 30 that have caused significant damage to aircraft since 2000. In the same period Sacramento airport had 28. The total number of bird strikes at JFK was about 1800 since 1990. LaGuardia had 954 for the same period. The cost of aircraft damage for the New York incidents was said to be over 200 million by Senator Charles Schumer. One reason for the larger number of bird strikes at those particular airports is their locations near areas with considerable populations of wild birds.
Land-based animals are also hit by planes. Crocodiles, dogs, foxes - even some armadillos -have been in incidents with aircraft. Try a search by species and state for your self. Select a species from the drop down menu, choose a state, or ALL for every state, a time frame and hit the submit query button.
Image Credit: Public Domain
