Your airplane hits an animal — now what?

Every summer, hundreds of diamondback terrapins crawl over to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to lay their eggs. In past years, the turtles have been so obstructive, they’ve caused flight delays. To manage situations like these, airports like JFK have entire departments dedicated to keeping wildlife and planes out of each other’s way.

While keeping the tarmac clear of turtles allows airports to operate smoothly, the real danger looms in the skies. On average, over 10,000 wildlife strikes are reported each year to the Federal Aviation Administration, most of them birds. As more planes take to the skies the number of bird strikes has trended upward at an alarming rate, threatening to damage planes, or worse, cause…

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