What are the chances of a plane to get struck by celestial bodies like meteors or comets

Question

Do planes have warning systems? Did it even happen before?

In: Physics

Answer 1

Surface area of earth is 510,000,000,000,000 square meters. Surface area of an average plane is roughly 100 square meters.About 10,000 planes in sky on average at any given time.
So the flying planes make up roughly 1/510,000,000 of surface of earth. So basically, when a meteorite strikes, in theory it has 1/510,000,000th chance of hitting plane.
On average, 6,100 meteorites reach earth surface per year, therefore the chances of a plane being hit by a meteorite is about once in 84,000 years.