ChasingBlueSky 0 #1 September 17, 2004 Just watching the news here in Chicago..Flight 1394 (an S80) struck a group of birds just after take off around 3000AGL and 300mph. Engine caught fire and spread pieces and dead birds across the NW Burbs. The engine on fire was caught on home video as well. Looks like it was a flock of geese. Emergency landing back at Ohare and no injuries._________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again..... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PhreeZone 20 #2 September 17, 2004 The MD80's got the engines right next to the main body. I'd suggest looking at the windshield for impact marks also. I bet the pilots were'nt expecting that on take off.Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
diverdriver 7 #3 September 17, 2004 QuoteThe MD80's got the engines right next to the main body. I'd suggest looking at the windshield for impact marks also. I bet the pilots were'nt expecting that on take off. You're ALWAYS expecting problems on takeoff if you are a good pilot. And it says right on ATIS "caution for numerous birds in the vicinity". Like no duh. Birds? Flying in the air? The sh*t you say!Chris Schindler www.diverdriver.com ATP/D-19012 FB #4125 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Taylor610 0 #4 September 17, 2004 And it says right on ATIS "caution for numerous birds in the vicinity". Like no duh. Birds? Flying in the air? The sh*t you say! *** Sheep Dog...Sheep Dog... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sunshine 2 #5 September 17, 2004 All this in time for Talk Like a Pilot Day!! ___________________________________________ meow I get a Mike hug! I get a Mike hug! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ChasingBlueSky 0 #6 September 17, 2004 Sounds like a good idea. I try to avoid Flock of Seagulls as much as possible. Damn, I really hated that group!_________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again..... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
2fat2fly 0 #7 September 17, 2004 QuoteSounds like a good idea. I try to avoid Flock of Seagulls as much as possible. Damn, I really hated that group! Saw them walking toward me once so I ran, I ran so far away Couldn't get awayI am not the man. But the man knows my name...and he's worried Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PhreeZone 20 #8 September 17, 2004 You can run, (no, you can't run) You can hide, (no, you can't hide) You can run, (no, you can't run) You can hide away.Yesterday is history And tomorrow is a mystery Parachutemanuals.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
craichead 0 #9 September 17, 2004 Here's the (very long) Chicago Tribune article on it, btw! _Pm http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0409170317sep17,1,3096023.story Jet's engine explodes, drops debris on Niles Bird collision suspected; aircraft lands safely at O'Hare By John Bebow and Jon Hilkevitch, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporter Patrick Rucker and freelance reporter Brian Cox contributed to this report Published September 17, 2004 They heard the boom all over Niles. A sharp crack from American Airlines Flight 1374 broke the everyday drone of jet traffic over the near north suburb shortly after 2 p.m. Thursday. The plane returned safely to O'Hare minutes after takeoff. No one was injured. But the shards of metal that rained down on neighborhoods, play yards and a town fountain reminded residents of the potential dangers in the sky. As at least one large bird apparently was sucked into the left engine of the twin-engine McDonnell Douglas Super 80 bound for Philadelphia with 107 passengers and a crew of five on board, the resulting roar drove Jeanne O'Grady's cat under the couch. Later, as O'Grady, 43, walked near her home near Howard Street and Harlem Avenue, she found a 4-inch piece of jagged metal thought to have fallen from the plane. "If that had hit a kid in the head, that would have been really bad," she said. "Of course you can't blame anyone, because it was a bird. But it worries me that they want to make the airport bigger. Thank God nothing has happened before." In a harrowing few moments, police scanners blared calls for all available ambulances to report to O'Hare as witnesses on the ground saw flames coming from the plane. On board, passengers heard one or two loud booms and felt the left side and tail shake and dip. Some concluded death was imminent. Joe Richardson, 44, who lives in a Philadelphia suburb, looked out the window and saw that "the whole left side" was on fire. He said he was "absolutely" convinced the plane was going to crash. The MD-80, however, is designed to fly safely with one engine. Pilots quickly turned the plane around as flight controllers at O'Hare cleared runways for a successful emergency landing. "The pilots thought they saw about 20 geese, and I think one got cooked, at least," said American spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan. "The pilots did their job. They did what they were trained to do." The plane, piloted by a captain and first officer with more than 8,000 combined hours of flight experience, departed O'Hare on a northeast heading shortly after 2 p.m. The plan was to climb to 24,000 feet by the time it was well over Lake Michigan, 40 miles from the airport. But 10 miles from the airport, at about 3,000 feet with the plane still in a critical phase of flight, the pilots saw the flock of geese, then heard a cockpit alarm as the left engine burst into flames. The pilots deployed an external fire extinguisher, shut down the charred engine and immediately banked back to the southeast. The O'Hare tower momentarily stopped all arrivals and departures, allowing Flight 1374 clear access back to the ground, where it safely came to rest at 2:19 p.m., according to officials at the airline and the Federal Aviation Administration. Back on the ground, passenger Jeff Mueller, 38, a former Delta Airlines mechanic from Chicago, said both wings of the plane were splattered with bird blood. "The outside of the engine was just like charcoal," Mueller said. "You come down the stairs and look back, and you think you're very lucky." None of the passengers or five crew members required medical treatment, Fagan said. They were whisked to a new flight that left O'Hare at 4:44 p.m. and arrived in Philadelphia shortly after 7 p.m. The kind of bird strike suspected to have caused Thursday's spectacle is an everyday occurrence in commercial aviation. But rarely do the mid-air collisions between fowl and jets cause such a scare. "It's a dangerous thing, but not unusual, and not excessively dangerous," said Fred Culick, emeritus professor of mechanical engineering and jet propulsion at the California Institute of Technology. The FAA's National Wildlife Strike Database shows planes made contact with animals, including birds, 2,237 times this year so far. It happened 6,819 times last year and 61,907 times since 1990. Canada geese have been the victims of 89 such collisions with airplanes in Illinois in the past 14 years, according to the FAA. But in more than 80 percent of bird-plane collisions there is no noticeable effect. Only 8 percent of such mishaps result in engine shutdowns or precautionary landings. In 1995, an Air Force AWACS radar plane crashed in Alaska, killing 24 crewmen, after geese were sucked into one of the plane's engines. Six people in the United States died of injuries attributable to collisions between birds and non-military aircraft in the 1990s, according to federal data. It is nevertheless dramatic when the bird is a big one, and the place it hits is the center of an airplane engine. Small birds go right through, Culick said. Larger birds first smack into a rapidly whirring metal fan that likely cuts them apart before sending pieces through the engine's compressor, combustion chamber and turbine, tearing metal along the way and spraying burning fuel into the air. "One would guess seeing flames that something happened in the inner core," Culick said of Thursday's incident. "One would think a piece of the bird, a fairly big piece, went through the combustor and turbine." By mid-afternoon Thursday, Niles residents had turned wreckage hunting into an impromptu pastime. Niles police received more than 100 calls reporting the explosion or debris, said Cmdr. John Fryksdale. Chunks of metal fell into the Niles Veterans Memorial Waterfall at Touhy and Milwaukee Avenues. Dozens of bystanders gathered at Pioneer Park at Touhy and Harlem as police picked up more scraps that fell on baseball fields, in batting cages and on a miniature golf course. A caretaker at St. Adalbert Catholic Cemetery on Milwaukee Avenue called Niles police after two pieces of the airplane fell there, said Niles police Sgt. Jim Elenz. "He said he actually saw the stuff falling from the sky, and he pointed out the pieces," Elenz said. "They were about the size of a half sheet of paper. They were flexible, kind of looked like fiberglass." On the roof of the Niles Shopping and Medical Center, seven workers heard a loud noise and looked up to see the plane trailing flames and smoke behind it. People at the busy intersection of Touhy and Milwaukee stopped and looked at the sky. "First there was a pop and a roar," said roofing contractor Greg Dobbs. Another man on his crew, Ivaylo Toched, said he "heard something like thunder." Street traffic slowed and then stopped, said Toched. For a minute, maybe two, the workers on the roof watched the plane, which had apparently still been climbing out of takeoff, bend south toward Chicago, then limp back toward O'Hare. The flames went out once, reappeared, then went out again. "What happened today is scary," said Ron Smizera, 57, whose condo is less than 100 feet from where some of the debris fell in Pioneer Park. "This is rare. How often does stuff fall off a plane?" Others reveled in the oddity and the happy fact that no one got hurt. "We love it," Niles resident Mary Sullivan said of the steady roar overhead. "Sometimes we just sit out and watch because we have a passion for planes." - - - Plane lands after engine damage An American Airlines flight to Philadelphia returned safely to O'Hare International Airport Thursday after one of the plane's two engines apparently struck a bird. So far this year, about 80 airplane-bird strikes have been reported in Illinois. Left engine was significantly damaged. The plane can fly safely with one operating engine. PLANES WITH MOST BIRD-ENGINE STRIKES Reported strikes in the U.S. for commercial aircraft with fuselage-mounted engines 1990-99 McDonnell Douglas MD-80, 145, 7.36 McDonnell Douglas DC-9, 122, 7.83 Boeing-727, 106, 5.08 Fokker 100, 29, 8.14 Canadair RJ, 21, 79.73 AREA WITH MOST BIRD STRIKES Reported strikes in the U.S., 1990-99 California, 2516 Florida, 2,367 Illinois, 1,482 Kentucky, 723 Washington, D.C., 705 MCDONNELL DOUGLAS MD-80 Passenger capacity: 172 Engines: 2 Max takeoff weight: 140,000 pounds Wingspan: 107 feet, 10 inches Length: 147 feet, 10 inches Height: 29 feet, 8 inches STRIKE'S EFFECT ON FLIGHT Reported wildlife strikes in the U.S., 1990-99 None, 15,360 Aborted take off, 653 Precautionary landing, 1,344 Engines shut down, 156 Other*, 461 *Other includes reduced speed because of shattered windshield, emergency landing at destination airport or crash landing Sources: Federal Aviation Administration, National Wildlife Strike Database Serial Report 6, American Airlines,"Modern Commercial Aircraft" Chicago Tribune - See microfilm for complete graphic. Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune__ "Scared of love, love and aeroplanes...falling out, I said takes no brains." -- Andy Partridge (XTC) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ryoder 1,590 #10 September 17, 2004 QuoteJust watching the news here in Chicago..Flight 1394 (an S80) struck a group of birds just after take off around 3000AGL and 300mph. Engine caught fire and spread pieces and dead birds across the NW Burbs. The engine on fire was caught on home video as well. Looks like it was a flock of geese. Emergency landing back at Ohare and no injuries. Well God bless AA! I lived in the NW burbs for 3 years. The place is completely overrun with those obnoxious shitting rats-with-wings. They've attacked me when I was riding my bike. They've attacked me when I was rollerblading. They shit all over every square foot of the sidewalks and parking lots. Motorola had to hire a professional cleaning crew to clean their entire parking lot because there was so much goose shit that employees couldn't keep from tracking it into the building. The only good goose is a dead goose."There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
diverdriver 7 #11 September 17, 2004 But after it goes through the burner I guess you could say your goose is cooked? Bah dum bum. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
eeneR 3 #12 September 17, 2004 QuoteThe place is completely overrun with those obnoxious shitting rats-with-wings. Not to mention the nasty ass diseases those things carry that will fuck with not only dogs but humans Get that shit on your shoes, track it in the house...*shudder* Both my dogs ended up friggen sick thanks to a flock of geese that took residence at my old apartment complex...was fucking nasty as hell.She is not a "Dumb Blonde" - She is a "Light-Haired Detour Off The Information Superhighway." eeneR TF#72, FB#4130, Incauto Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Deuce 1 #13 September 17, 2004 QuoteBird Strike an AA plane in Chicago Alcoholic's Anonymous has their own plane? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ChasingBlueSky 0 #14 September 17, 2004 At least you know those pilots are dry. Can't say the same for others _________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again..... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
craichead 0 #15 September 17, 2004 Yeah, I know what you mean! Those Canadians are nasty, filthy creatures! Uh, I mean...those Canadian GEESE are nasty, filthy creatures! _Pm__ "Scared of love, love and aeroplanes...falling out, I said takes no brains." -- Andy Partridge (XTC) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nbblood 0 #16 September 17, 2004 At 3000 AGL??!!! Holy Crap, not a good day to be pulling at 2500 if that were a DZ! Anybody know of any known freefall bird strikes?? I had just ruled out the possibility of birds being that high. Guess I ought to start paying more attention to those migration patterns. Blues, NathanBlues, Nathan If you wait 'til the last minute, it'll only take a minute. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ChasingBlueSky 0 #17 September 17, 2004 Or pull higher_________________________________________ you can burn the land and boil the sea, but you can't take the sky from me.... I WILL fly again..... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
