JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — In recent months, it’s been a common occurrence to see headlines about airplane engines catching fire or planes forced to return to the runway due to wildlife strikes.
Despite the dangers or chaos those situations can cause, the efforts to prevent those situations begin long before takeoff.
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<
Action News Jax was granted exclusive access to the Jacksonville International Airport’s airfield for an inside look at how airport teams are proactively managing the threat of wildlife strikes, which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said are on the rise nationally.
A daily defense
Wildlife, especially birds, pose a real threat to aviation, said certified wildlife biologist Alison Doran, who works with JIA. Doran and her teams spend their days patrolling the airport grounds with safety personnel, scanning the skies and the grounds for everything from mourning doves to coyotes to wild boars.
“You can’t mitigate for every bird,” Doran said. “You’re always going to have the one robin or the mourning dove. You want to target your strategies towards things that could cause a damaging strike, like large-bodied birds, flocking birds like gulls or cormorants.”
READ: Surveillance pricing: Location, demographics, shopping habits go into determining the price you pay
Data from the FAA Wildlife Strike Database shows JIA has seen at least 120 bird or wildlife strikes since 2023, which is slightly more than Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW) in Fort Myers over the same time frame, despite Fort Myers having roughly more daily flights.
JIA and RSW can be considered similar on a comparison scale, relative to other Florida daily flight airport counts.
READ: ‘JFRD was not prepared’: Battalion Chief breaks silence on Blount Island cargo ship fire injuries
While JIA hasn’t experienced any significantly damaging strikes in the past decade, prevention is still a 24/7 operation and commitment.
“Ops personnel are constantly driving around the perimeter road,” Doran explained. “They’re looking for safety hazards, wildlife, foreign object debris—anything that could interfere with flight.”
If a strike occurs, remains can be submitted to the Smithsonian’s Feather Identification Lab to determine the species involved, and strategies can be adjusted accordingly, such as changing mowing rotations to disrupt bird feeding patterns. Crews showed us that JIA safety vehicles are each equipped with a “strike” kit, which houses such tools.
Managing habitat, not just runways
The airfield’s safety team employs a layered approach to wildlife management, Doran said.
“It starts with habitat management, then exclusion, trapping, and removal,” she said. “We have a contract with the USDA to remove larger animals like deer, hogs, or coyotes that breach the fence.”
READ: Audit finds Florida’s guardianship program not doing enough to protect seniors from ‘malfeasance’
One of the airport’s key strategies is controlling grass height. The FAA recommends a height between six to 12 inches. Why? Too short, and birds see each other and feel safe to flock or stay together. Too tall, and it attracts mammals and insects that, in turn, attract birds.
“There’s a reason for everything,” Doran added, as she crouched beside a strip of grass on the runway. “We want to keep it at a height where birds can’t communicate effectively or feel comfortable landing.”
Her team also enforces “zero tolerance zones” for wildlife in critical safety areas near runways and adjusts mowing patterns to drive wildlife away from those zones.
Simulating crisis
Roughly 30 minutes south of the airport, at Jacksonville University, Captain David Marble trains future aviators for scenarios like bird strikes.
A former Delta pilot, Marble now teaches in the university’s School of Aviation using a flight simulator capable of replicating flights, including emergency scenarios. Action News Jax got the chance to watch Captain Marble run through flight training with a Jacksonville University Aviation Student.
“We simulate engine failures, bird strikes, electrical or hydraulic problems,” Marble said. “Pilots are trained to identify issues quickly, refer to their crew alerting systems, and execute checklists with precision. Very few things that happen in an airplane can’t be handled if the crew is working together.”
[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]
Marble said students often train under challenging weather conditions to build confidence in emergency scenarios.
“They fly approaches in fog, rain, snow. We push them with night flights and mountainous terrain training,” he said. “All of this ensures they’re ready when it counts.”
Built to withstand
According to the FAA, commercial aircraft engines are designed to safely ingest birds weighing up to four pounds, and planes are built to withstand strikes from birds up to eight pounds. During our visit to the airfield, the Action News Jax team did not see any birds over that threshold.
But Doran says large-bodied birds, particularly those that fly in flocks, remain the biggest concern. Species like gulls (seagulls) and cormorants are regularly spotted, and some, like cattle egrets, are drawn to airport mowers because of the insects they stir up.
[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]
“If we see that pattern, we change our mowing,” Doran said. “Everything we do is about removing food, water, and cover—whatever attracts the wildlife in the first place.”
A shared responsibility
From biologists monitoring the fence line to student pilots training for in-air emergencies, keeping the skies safe is a coordinated effort that begins long before passengers board, JIA safety officials said.
“We can’t prevent every strike, but we can do everything in our power to minimize the risk,” Doran said.
Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.
Sign Up
