CHARLOTTE — A plane heading to Charlotte had to make an emergency landing after a bird flew into the engine Thursday night, American Airlines officials confirmed with Channel 9.
Thankfully, no one was hurt. Some passengers told Channel 9 that it was a scary situation, but others didn’t know what happened until the plane made an emergency landing at another New York airport.
Flight 1722 from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte Douglas International Airport was diverted to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport due to the reported bird strike.
The Airbus A321 landed safely and there were no injuries to the 196 passengers and crew onboard.
It happened about 12 seconds after the wheels left the ground.
“It was a loud bang, and the plane just started shaking like crazy,” Maurice Whitten told Channel 9′s Ken Lemon.
Whitten was one of the passengers on board Thursday night, and we spoke with him when he finally made it to Charlotte Friday morning.
“Everybody on the plane was visibly upset, we couldn’t quite figure out what was going on,” Whitten told Lemon.
The flight crew knew they had to turn around, but from communication with Air Traffic Control, you can hear they weren’t completely certain why at first either.
“It appears we have an engine failure, but uh, we are still kind of working through to figure out what’s going on,” the flight crew can be heard saying on a recording from the cockpit. “We hit birds on the way out.”
They turned the plane around and landed nearby. Whitten and the rest of the passengers and crew flew back in the morning.
Experts say that luckily this incident was manageable. Hitting a flock of birds could be very problematic.
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ABC News Aviation Expert John Nance says he understands the passengers’ reaction, but he said bird strikes happen daily.
“[There are] 19,400 strikes a year with birds, but it’s another thing to explain to passengers what that flash of light was, and the sound. That’s so frightening,” Nance said.
A flight instructor told Lemon that pilots do prepare for this situation. He pointed out that the flight path on paper was straight, even after the bird strike last night, which shows the flight crew was cautious but never lost control.
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