Bird Strikes in the United States

Bird strikes hit the front pages when Sully Sullenberger heroically navigated a plane full of passengers into the Hudson River after hitting a large flock of geese. But bird strikes are far more common than you might think. Each year, collisions with birds cost over $600 million in damages to aircraft in the United States. Let's take a hypothetical flight through some of the bird strikes of 2010. *note: data presented in this timeline does not represent all bird strikes of 2010, only those for which the period of flight was recorded.