FAA makes public its airplane-bird strike data

— -- Collisions between birds and aircraft serious enough to cause substantial damage have occurred at nearly all of the nation's large commercial airports, according to federal data released Friday.

New York's John F. Kennedy International, which is located next to a wildlife preserve, tops the list of reports in which aircraft suffered serious damage with 80 from 1990 to mid-2008, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) data.

Bird risk experts said that the FAA's bird strike data cannot be used to compare risks between airports because reports of collisions between planes and wildlife are voluntary.

"Everybody's got a bird problem, period," said Paul Eschenfelder, an airline pilot who teaches airport wildlife management and has called for additional steps to combat the problem. "It's all the way across the nation. It's going to vary by degree, but it's everybody's problem."

The data shows that airports from Salt Lake City to Orlando have experienced severe collisions between birds and wildlife.

Significant numbers of the most serious bird strikes occur outside airport boundaries, according to the data.

For example, the data contains 56 reports of significant damage to aircraft taking off or arriving at Sacramento International Airport, which is located in popular destination for birds near a river in California's Central Valley. Of those reports, 36 — or 64% of the total — occurred above 500 feet, according to the data.

All of the recent serious aviation accidents involving birds in the U.S. have occurred away from airports, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The US Airways flight that struck a flock of Canada geese on Jan. 15 was several miles from LaGuardia Airport in New York at the time of the collision. The pilots made a dramatic landing in the Hudson River after losing power in both engines. Nobody died in the accident.

USA TODAY obtained the data before its public release and reported April 7 that collisions involving large birds such as those in the US Airways accident have gone up dramatically.