FACTBOX - Birds pose serious threat to planes

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Aviation authorities are investigating whether a flock of geese was responsible for bringing down a jet carrying more than 150 people in New York on Thursday. All the passengers were rescued after the pilot made an emergency landing on the Hudson River.

The following are some facts about the dangers birds pose to aviation.

* Damage by birds and other wildlife striking aircraft annually amounts to well over $600 million for U.S. civil and military aviation and over 219 people have been killed worldwide as a result of wildlife strikes since 1988.

* Birds have posed a danger as long as people have been flying. The first recorded bird strike was by Oliver Wright, who wrote in his diary that his plane hit a bird, probably a red-winged blackbird, over Ohio in September 1905.

* Birds are not the only wildlife problem for aircraft but they do account for 97 percent of wildlife strikes. Other animals that have hit planes during take-off or landing include deer, coyotes, bats and alligators.

* Waterfowl (31 percent), gulls (26 percent), and raptors (18 percent) represented three quarters of the reported bird strikes causing damage to U.S. civil aircraft, 1990-2007.

* Over 760 civil aircraft collisions with deer and 250 collisions with coyotes were reported in the United States, 1990-2007.

* Birds are a particularly serious hazard at airports near water. New York's LaGuardia airport, where the plane in Thursday's accident took off, has tried many methods over the years to disperse birds from the area around the airport. Noise cannons are most common but birds are thought to become resistant, or even excited by the noise over time.

(Sources: Federal Aviation Authority and the Bird Strike Committee which includes FAA, defence and agriculture department officials -- www.birdstrike.org)

(Additional reporting by Lilla Zuill and Deborah Charles, writing by Claudia Parsons; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)