Comparing the frequency of reported wildlife strikes by region in the United States

Abstract

Wildlife strikes are a threat to the safety of flight and a financial burden to aircraft operators. Although wildlife strikes are an unavoidable hazard in aviation, they can be mitigated through various methods, including airport wildlife management plans, deterring animal inhabitance around airports, and a national reporting system to bring awareness to the issue. This ex-post-facto research determined the difference in frequency of wildlife strikes at non-military class B airports in the contiguous United States by geographical region. Regions were defined as follows: (1) the Pacific coast, (2) the western mountainous areas and Texas, (3) the Midwest, (4) the Southeast, and (5) the Northeast. A total of 27,036 reports ranging from 1/1/2015 to 12/31/2019 were collected from the publicly available Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) database. The data analysis of regions showed that Region 2 had the greatest frequency of wildlife strikes, while Region 1 had the least frequency of strikes. Moreover, a between-subjects ANOVA suggested that there was a significant difference in the frequency of strikes between regions in the contiguous US. The airports in Region 1 underwent significantly fewer wildlife strikes than those in Regions 2, 3, and 4. Region 2 also had a significantly greater frequency of strikes than Region 5.