Nearly two-thirds of a small group of agricultural pilots involved in wire strike accidents were aware of the wires before their aircraft struck them, according to a focus group study by researchers from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Civil Aerospace Medical Institute and the Cherokee Nation.1
Each of the 22 participants in the 2022 focus group had, at some time, flown an aircraft that collided with a guy wire — a tensioned cable designed to improve stability for a utility pole or other free-standing structure — and in 65 percent of the strikes, the pilots said that they knew before the strike that the wire was there, the FAA report on the study said. Some of the participating pilots experienced more than one wire strike, and together they recorded a total of 31 strikes.
One pilot reported being “100 percent aware” of the wire, the report said, and another said, “Yeah, I pulled up over that wire, 39 times. … I hit it on the 40th …
