Bird strike

A bird strike (sometimes called birdstrike, bird ingestion (for an engine), bird hit, or bird aircraft strike hazard (BASH)) is a collision between an airborne animal (usually a bird or bat)^[1] and a moving vehicle (usually an aircraft). The term is also used for bird deaths resulting from collisions with structures, such as power lines, towers and wind turbines (see bird–skyscraper collisions and towerkill).^[2]

A significant threat to flight safety, bird strikes have caused a number of accidents with human casualties.^[3] There are over 13,000 bird strikes annually in the US alone.^[4] However, the number of major accidents involving civil aircraft is quite low and it has been estimated that there is only about one accident resulting in human death in one billion (10⁹) flying hours.^[5] The majority of bird strikes (65%) cause little damage to the aircraft;^[6] however, the collision is usually fatal to the bird(s) involved.

Vultures and geese have been ranked the second and third most hazardous kinds of wildlife to aircraft in the United States, after deer,^[7] with approximately 240 goose–aircraft collisions in the United States each year. 80% of all bird strikes go unreported.^[8]

Most accidents occur when a bird (or group of birds) collides with the windscreen or is sucked into the engine of jet aircraft. These cause annual damages that have been estimated at $400 million^[3] within the United States alone and up to $1.2 billion to commercial aircraft worldwide.^[9] In addition to property damage, collisions between man-made structures and conveyances and birds is a contributing factor, among many others, to the worldwide decline of many avian species.^[10]

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) received 65,139 bird strike reports for 2011–14, and the Federal Aviation Administration counted 177,269 wildlife strike reports on civil aircraft between 1990 and 2015, growing 38% in seven years from 2009 to 2015. Birds accounted for 97%.^[11]