Composition or encounter? Decomposing the altitude and night-time damage premiums in wildlife strikes to civil aircraft in the United States
Abstract
Damaging wildlife strikes to civil aircraft are commoner above 500 ft and at night, patterns usually attributed to the animals involved. Using the FAA National Wildlife Strike Database (354,564 reports, 1990–2026), damage probabilities were directly standardised to a common taxon mix under three standard populations, separately for aircraft up to and above 5,700 kg. Standardisation removed 66 to 80% of the night excess in lighter and 65 to 95% in heavier aircraft, leaving 1.07 (1.001–1.15) and 1.04 (0.99–1.09). How much remains is not settled: it varies with the coding of the outcome (1.04 to 1.10 and 0.97 to 1.04) and with whether unidentified birds are treated as composition, and intervals that resample airports include 1. Composition removed less of the altitude excess, where ratios stayed at 1.90 to 2.30 and 1.70 to 2.33 and the association held within individual taxa. Among heavier aircraft it weakened once recorded airspeed was held: on airspeeds present on both sides of 500 ft the ratio fell from 1.50 to between 1.10 and 1.24, and to 1.14 on 10-kt bins. Damage probability levelled off above 1,500 ft in lighter aircraft but not in heavier ones. Airspeed is recorded selectively and species identification depends on damage and height, so collision energy and the selective reporting of strikes at altitude cannot be separated here. Hazard assessments for climb and approach corridors should not rest on species presence alone.
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BibTeX
@misc{kolomiiets2026composition,
title = {{Composition or encounter? Decomposing the altitude and night-time damage premiums in wildlife strikes to civil aircraft in the United States}},
author = {Denys Kolomiiets},
howpublished = {EcoEvoRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.32942/x2c67r},
url = {https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/14895/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Composition or encounter? Decomposing the altitude and night-time damage premiums in wildlife strikes to civil aircraft in the United States
AU - Denys Kolomiiets
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/11
PB - EcoEvoRxiv
DO - 10.32942/x2c67r
UR - https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/14895/
AB - Damaging wildlife strikes to civil aircraft are commoner above 500 ft and at night, patterns usually attributed to the animals involved. Using the FAA National Wildlife Strike Database (354,564 reports, 1990–2026), damage probabilities were directly standardised to a common taxon mix under three standard populations, separately for aircraft up to and above 5,700 kg. Standardisation removed 66 to 80% of the night excess in lighter and 65 to 95% in heavier aircraft, leaving 1.07 (1.001–1.15) and 1.04 (0.99–1.09). How much remains is not settled: it varies with the coding of the outcome (1.04 to 1.10 and 0.97 to 1.04) and with whether unidentified birds are treated as composition, and intervals that resample airports include 1. Composition removed less of the altitude excess, where ratios stayed at 1.90 to 2.30 and 1.70 to 2.33 and the association held within individual taxa. Among heavier aircraft it weakened once recorded airspeed was held: on airspeeds present on both sides of 500 ft the ratio fell from 1.50 to between 1.10 and 1.24, and to 1.14 on 10-kt bins. Damage probability levelled off above 1,500 ft in lighter aircraft but not in heavier ones. Airspeed is recorded selectively and species identification depends on damage and height, so collision energy and the selective reporting of strikes at altitude cannot be separated here. Hazard assessments for climb and approach corridors should not rest on species presence alone.
ER -