[Sarah Barracuda]

Geez that must have been a pretty big bird to hit that plane in order to bring it down. Never heard of such a thing

[Erik Latranyi]

Geez that must have been a pretty big bird to hit that plane in order to bring it down. Never heard of such a thing

Going through a flock of geese can take out both engines.

[ArrogantBustard]

It's not uncommon ... jet engines are designed to withstand ingesting some amount of foreign objects (birds, for example), but there's such thing as "too much". "Too much" will wreck the engine.

[CholeraJoe]

A white pelican brought down a B-1B bomber in 1987. Six on board, 3 got out. Low level, high subsonic bird strike between engines 1 and 2 cut all of the hydraulics.

[Crolis]

My understanding is it doesn’t take that large of an object to cause a major problem if it is ingested into an engine. I’m sure our Freeper pilot/aircraft expert community will have more analysis as information is reported.

[Strategerist]

Geez that must have been a pretty big bird to hit that plane in order to bring it down. Never heard of such a thing

Air crashes not being common to begin with, bird strikes are actually a pretty common cause of them.

[dighton]

A bad one.

[HeadOn]

Doesn’t take much. The guys at the Air Force base where I used to work many moons ago used to describe wrecked jet engines as “corn cobbed”.

When something, even as small as a nut or bolt (bird) gets sucked into the engine, the pristine rows of compressor and turbine blades all get knocked off or down, and the whole internal assembly looks like a corn cob somebody just finished eating! Doesn’t work very well after that... :-)

[Never on my watch]

Geese took out one of our AWACS planes in Alaska. Lost friends there.

[LukeSW]

Geez that must have been a pretty big bird to hit that plane in order to bring it down. Never heard of such a thing

Trust me, a goose will stop any jet engine. Hit a buzzard once flying an F-4 fighter. Blew a huge hole out in my 1 inch thick canopy. I was lucky to have not been injured or killed.

BTW, are you that Sarah Barracuda, i.e. the Governor?

[dools007]

Surely you jest. Single bird strikes have downed many small aircraft—props and jets. Usually takes a flock to disable the engines on an airliner.

[greysells2]

birds injested into a jet engine to a terrible whack of damage in a hurry. doesn’t take much to make a mess of the whole works.