Official sources
Runway Wildlife uses the FAA National Wildlife Strike Database public Excel export downloaded September 16, 2026. The export contains 355,556 report rows and 102 fields. Airport, wildlife, aircraft, damage, phase, month, and cost values come from that file.
For one traffic-normalized comparison, we join FAA airport IDs to Bureau of Transportation Statistics Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance departures for July 2025 through June 2026—the exact twelve-month strike-report window used in the numerator.
What a report count means
The FAA states that wildlife-strike reporting is voluntary. A count measures records received. It can be affected by air traffic, wildlife, reporting culture, detection, outreach, and processing lag.
Damage share
Damage share is the percentage of filed reports where the FAA export's indicated-damage field is set. It is conditional on a report existing. It is not the probability that a flight will be damaged.
Covered traffic rate
The rate is reports from July 2025 through June 2026 divided by BTS reporting-carrier scheduled domestic departures from the same airport and period, multiplied by 100,000. It appears only with at least 1,000 covered departures. It excludes cargo-only, general-aviation, international, and other movements outside that BTS product, so it is labeled a covered-departure rate—not airport risk.
Thresholds
Airport profiles require at least 20 historical reports or 8 reports in 2021–2025. Named wildlife profiles require 30 reports. Aircraft profiles require 50. Airport-wildlife pages require 8 reports; airport-aircraft pages require 12.
Complete-year trend
Trend charts stop at 2025. The 2026 export year is incomplete and is not used as a full-year comparison.
No safety grade
We do not combine report counts, damage, species, and traffic into one score. The source cannot support that interpretation.