In the aviation industry, the term "bird strike" refers to any time an aircraft comes into contact with a bird or other flying animal like a bat during takeoff, flight or landing.
The vast majority of the 21,000 such strikes that take place every year are so minor that they do not require the pilot to alter course in any way but occasionally a collision can carry disastrous consequences.
The most famous case occurred when, on Jan. 15, 2009, Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger successfully landed a plane that hit a flock of geese into the Hudson River.
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United Airlines says a plane struck a coyote on a runway
While significantly more rare as they'd need to take place while the plane is on the runway, planes occasionally come into contact with other animals.
United Airlines (UAL) revealed a Jan. 12 incident in which a plane bound for Phoenix had to turn back toward O'Hare International Airport in Chicago after striking a coyote on the runway.
The Boeing 737 MAX 9 (BA) plane had departed from O'Hare to the runway at 10:05 a.m. local time and was diverted just under 20 minutes later at 10:22 a.m. United confirmed that Flight 1727 was back at the gate by 10:45 a.m. "to examine the aircraft after its landing gear struck a coyote during takeoff."
Related: A bird incident temporarily closed down an airport runway
While none of the 167 passengers or six crew members aboard the plane was injured in any way the plane still had to be taken out of commission for review and examination as is policy any time a flight gets diverted over a strike.
"We arranged for another plane to take our customers to their destination later that afternoon," United said in a further press statement.
Here are some other incidents in which a plane was diverted over animals
Coyotes are a common animal in the Chicago area, but their population growth in recent years has increased the frequency of incidents in areas commonly frequented by humans.
On the same weekend, police had to chase a coyote who had entered an Aldi store in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood before it could injure anyone inside. A local branch of Animal Care And Control reported a 27% increase in coyote activity in the Chicago area between 2023 and 2024.
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Runway strikes are rare but occasionally do occur when an animal wanders onto the runway and is not spotted in time.
In December 2023, the pilot of a small plane in South Carolina struck a deer when attempting to take off from Union County Airport, while in 2020 an Alaska Airlines (ALK) flight struck and killed a brown bear when on the runway in the isolated town of Yakutat.
Numbers from FAA show that the mourning dove is the most common type of bird struck by airplanes (its small size means that this rarely causes any kind of damage to the plane or diverts the flight), while the most common animal is the free-tailed bat.
Collisions with land animals such as deer, bears, wolves and coyote are quite rare comparatively due to the limited timeframe in which this can take place.
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