Behavioral Traits and Airport Type Affecting Mammal Incidents with U.S. Civil Aircraft

Abstract

Wildlife incidents with aircraft are estimated to have cost the U.S. civil aviation industry more than $1.4 billion in damages and lost revenue from 1990 to 2009. Mammal incidents are five times as likely to cause damage as other wildlife incidents. The behavioral traits, the size of mammal species, and the differences in mammal management techniques may produce incident variation. The FAA National Wildlife Strike database (1990 to 2010) was used to characterize and analyze these incidents by airport type: Part 139 certified (certificated) and general aviation (GA). Relative hazard scores were generated for the species most frequently involved in incidents on the basis of damage and effect on flight. Incidents were found to be most frequent in October (n = 215) at certificated airports and in November (n = 111) at GA airports, but more incidents were reported in August (n = 310) at all airports. Most (63.2%) incidents at all airports (n = 1,523) occurred at night, but the greatest incident rate occurred at dusk (177.3 incidents per hour). Certificated airports had more than twice as many incidents as GA airports and other airports, but more incidents with damage (n = 1,594) occurred at GA airports (38.6%) than at certificated airports (19.0%) or other airports (n = 1.76%). Overall, the relative hazard score increased with increasing log body mass. From these findings, it is recommended that biologists evaluate mammal species on airport grounds on the basis of aircraft hazard information provided here and consider prioritizing management strategies that emphasize reducing the occurrence of species on airport property.