Open versioned aggregates of the FAA National Wildlife Strike Database (1990-2026): conditional damage rates by animal family, airframe, and airport

Denys Kolomiiets

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arXiv · 2608.12390

Open versioned aggregates of the FAA National Wildlife Strike Database (1990-2026): conditional damage rates by animal family, airframe, and airport

Denys Kolomiiets

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Abstract

Background. Aircraft-wildlife collisions are a documented aviation hazard. The FAA National Wildlife Strike Database is the main public source of U.S. reports, but raw extracts are large and rarely released as versioned aggregates. Methods. We convert the public FAA Access export (STRIKE_REPORTS) to SQLite, define a report as damaging when DAMAGE_LEVEL is one of M, M?, S, D, and fold rows into open aggregates (year, airport, species, aircraft, animal family) via hierarchical SPECIES_ID prefixes. We analyze all civil reports and a commercial subset (AC_MASS 3-5). Rates are per reported strike, not per flight hour, so every rate is conditional on a report having been filed. Trend statistics use complete incident years 1990-2025; cross-sectional facets cover the full seed, incident years 1990-2026. Results. Numbers are locked to the 2026-07-04 freeze. Reported strikes in 2025 reach a series high (24,458 total; 901 damaging). Species that dominate strike counts are not those with the highest damage rates: perching songbirds account for 41.1% of identified strikes but damage aircraft in 1.5% of reports (95% CI 1.4-1.6), whereas deer account for 0.7% but damage aircraft in 81.8% of reports (95% CI 79.8-83.7). Airports ranked by total strikes (led by Denver Intl) diverge from rankings by damaging strikes (led by Sacramento Intl); across the 452 airports with at least 50 reports, volume and conditional damage rate are negatively rank-correlated (Spearman rho = -0.44, p < 0.001); large stations plausibly capture minor events more completely, so this is not a hazard ranking. The share of reports labeled damaging declines over decades, consistent with improved reporting of minor events, while absolute damaging counts peak in 2025. Conclusions. Versioned open aggregates and a documented damage-rate analysis enable independent reuse; released under CC BY 4.0.

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Denys Kolomiiets. 2026-08-02. Open versioned aggregates of the FAA National Wildlife Strike Database (1990-2026): conditional damage rates by animal family, airframe, and airport. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.12390

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