Bird strikes are a common problem for flights

After a plane crashed as it was landing in South Korea on Sunday, killing 179 of the 181 people on board, officials said they were investigating possible causes including a landing gear malfunction and a bird strike. While it is not uncommon for planes to strike wildlife, most episodes don’t result in deaths or serious injuries. Still, from 1988 through 2023, wildlife strikes involving civilian and military aircraft killed 76 people in the United States, according to a Federal Aviation Administration report published in June. Most of those strikes involved birds, but the F.A.A.’s definition of a wildlife strike also includes coyotes, deer and bats. In the United States in 2023, 19,603 wildlife strikes were reported, which averages out to about 54 strikes each day, according to the aviation administration’s report. Of those strikes, 3.6% caused damage. Here are some notable episodes when a bird strike was found to have contributed to an aviation accident.<br/>A Boeing 737 Max Crash in Ethiopia: The March 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which killed all 157 people on board, happened less than five months after another Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board. Both crashes were attributed in part to a faulty flight control system with the 737 Max, which was temporarily grounded after the Ethiopian Airlines crash. In that latter crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said in January 2023, a bad sensor reading was caused by an object, most likely a bird. That bad reading activated the flawed flight control system called MCAS, which pitched the nose of the plane downward shortly after the plane left Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, for Nairobi, Kenya, causing the crash. ‘Miracle on the Hudson’: Shortly after a US Airways flight took off from LaGuardia Airport in January 2009, headed to Charlotte, N.C., the airplane struck a flock of geese, disabling the plane.<br/>