Bird strike

[ex-khobar Andy]

Seeing the news of the S Korea airliner crash with 179 dead and of course the Captain Sully story from 2009 (Hudson River landing) we see how dangerous a bird strike can be.

I've been in one - maybe 30 years ago - I was sitting in the back as we smokers did then, waiting to go through 10,000 feet and we can all light up. It was a flight out of Philadelphia: I don't recall where to or which airline. It was a rear-jet aircraft - maybe a Boeing 727 or MD-80 or similar. We took off and had been in the air less than a minute. There was a thud and immediately our area smelt like a chicken when you take it out of the bag to cook it. There is no smell like that and I knew instantly what had happened, and the pilot came on the PA very quickly to say that we were returning to Philly. We did; uneventful landing and we had to wait for a new plane.

The Boeing 727 had three rear engines, the McDonnell Douglas -80 and -90 had two. I assume the birdstrike disabled just one engine and we returned on the remaining one or two.

PS - I just looked it up. Smoking was banned in all domestic flights in 1990, so either it was earlier than that, or I was just sitting in the back through force of habit.

[Burning Petard]

Reading the tea leaves and the chicken bones--no real data, but it looks as though the crew could not get the landing gear down. Again, no real data, but I think this plane was built with three independent methods of getting those wheels down, two hydraulic and one mechanical Redundancy is the engineers answer to reliability. Looks like a maintenance problem with a cut-rate economy Airline to me.

But the investigation, modified by politics, will tell us.

snailgate.

[Big RR]

I think you're right; I was once in the exit row on an MD 80 plane to San Juan and the pilot came out to tell us what we had to do. Apparently the landing gear didn't fully come down and we were told in detail how to remove the door if it collapsed and exit on the slide; he also said he had a guy going "downstairs" to try to bring it down manually--apparently it worked as we (thankfully) landed uneventfully. I do recall they brought a maintenance truck out to either check out or secure the landing gear before we taxied to the gate (it was probably OK or they would have made us get off and bring us to the terminal in buses; I also didn't see any foam on the runway). There usually are backups to backups in aviation.

[Sue U]

Seeing the news of the S Korea airliner crash with 179 dead and of course the Captain Sully story from 2009 (Hudson River landing) we see how dangerous a bird strike can be.

I've been in one - maybe 30 years ago - I was sitting in the back as we smokers did then, waiting to go through 10,000 feet and we can all light up. It was a flight out of Philadelphia: I don't recall where to or which airline. It was a rear-jet aircraft - maybe a Boeing 727 or MD-80 or similar. We took off and had been in the air less than a minute. There was a thud and immediately our area smelt like a chicken when you take it out of the bag to cook it. There is no smell like that and I knew instantly what had happened, and the pilot came on the PA very quickly to say that we were returning to Philly. We did; uneventful landing and we had to wait for a new plane.

Philly birds (but not the Iggles -- yet) must be suicidal. Two weeks ago we were taking off out of Philly (AA, Airbus A320) and as we were gaining altitude there was a loud bang. A few minutes later the pilot announced we had struck a bird and had to go back to the airport for a safety check, which we did. Aircraft was fine but the crew was now timed-out for flight so we had to wait while they rounded up a new crew. (Had to have dinner at an airport restaurant, where I ran into a former boss who was also on the same flight. Sometimes this world is way too small.) In retrospect, it may not have been the greatest idea to build the airport in an expansive wetland on the migratory routes of large waterfowl.

[Burning Petard]

You know why the Philly airpot is located there--nobody else wanted to develop that swamp.

snailgate.