BIRD STRIKE

"Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking"
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cabin goes quiet
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"Unfortunately I have some bad news....."
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cabin goes extremely quiet
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"On take off we have struck a bird and it has cracked the cockpit window, thus we are not able to complete our journey and we will have to return to Perth"
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cracked the what? yoiks!
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"We will however need to burn off some fuel before landing, I'll get back to you with more information before we land"
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Burn off fuel? Dude the window is cracked, shouldn't we land!! I guess he knows what he's doing, maybe it's just a small crack, hey I've seen a small crack on a car window creep along and become a large crack pretty damn quick and that crack wasn't under the pressures of being up at 25 000 feet. But hey I'm not a pilot and he is.
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So began an almost 2 hour fuel burn off (keep in mind the journey we were on only takes 2 hours) over the wheat belt and then out across the ocean above Garden and Rottnest islands. Finally we land and are all whisked across the tarmac to another aircraft.
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As we left the damaged one I managed to snap off a quick pic, didn't quite capture the damage, it's the window on the right of frame, but it had an impact point/depression right in the bottom centre of it and around a dozen long fractures radiating out from that point, it was fairly well stuffed.
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They make em strong thank christ

aircraft

windscreen

Comments

Anonymous said…
OMG. Never heard of this happening before! Poor bird must have shat itself before the collision :(
stu said…
No doubt, but I'm thinking that at the speeed the plane was travelling that bird wouldn't even have known what hit it....instant!