As the assistant director of aviation for the Colorado Springs Airport, David Bird is one of those people. In August 1998, he says, a small business jet landing at the airport hit a coyote on the runway with its main landing gear. The animal was flattened, and safety concerns swelled. If you are landing at 150 miles an hour and you hit a bump weighing 35 pounds, well, it's not something you want to encounter, especially at night. Animals and planes converging at the same point is not a good thing.
Birds getting sucked into the engines are as much or more of a hazard than an animal.
But any wildlife is a potential threat. Coyotes can distract pilots, making them swerve to avoid hitting the animals. Theoretically, coyotes could even be sucked into a plane's engine or cause a piece of landing gear to collapse. We have sightings every week by pilots or ground personnel. Coyote populations are expanding.