Plane lands at Sea-Tac with burning engine

Source: Plane lands at Sea-Tac with burning engine

One of the engines on a US Airways flight into Sea-Tac Airport caught fire Tuesday evening as it started to descend. No one was injured. A bird was sucked into the right engine of the Airbus A319 near Seattle, airport spokesman Bob Parker said. But the pilot noticed only a small vibration at the time and did not request an emergency landing "because he never really knew what was going on," Parker said. Some of the passengers in the rear of the plane -- US Airways Flight 59 from Charlotte, N.C. -- noticed the flames and alerted the plane's crew. The plane landed normally, and the pilot taxied to the intended gate.

just found this on the newspaper site. birds have caused crashes before being sucked in.

Yes... isn't it strange, how a multi-million plane with a weight of hundreds of tons can be destroyed by a bird... Wouldn't that be the perfect missile...

funny story:

the US airforce used to test their canopies and windshields against bird strikes by shooting dead chickens at them through an air canon. the brits thought this was a wonderful idea and built their own canon from the airforce specs......but they had a problem. every time they used it, they broke a canopy. so they asked the airforce to come across the pond and check out the system for them, because obviously (they thought) they were generating too much air pressure. the techs looked at the equipment for quite some time and found nothing wrong. so they asked the brits to demontrate how they were using it. the brits did so.

thirty minutes after the demonstration the airforce representatives were still rolling on the floor laughing their butts off.

turns out the brits used frozen chickens from the local market and never bothered to thaw them out before firing them from the canon.

boeing has a turkey shooter that they use to test engines. i bet there's some good video out on the net some where

Bigx01, I like that story, it is indeed very funny

I heard it several years ago but when I heard it there was no US connection but it was the cannons UK manufacturers who were called in by the Farnborough boffins who were breaking the canopies, otherwise it was the same story. Maybe its one of those urban legends that gains in appeal when the teller adds local flavour? I 'd like to see what the original; source for the story was, if there is one of course, someone may have just made it up.

yeah, that's entirely possible. i heard if from a lockheed engineer who said he heard it from a boeing guy. but it's still a good story

Sorry for getting your name wrong snafu, I misread the board and thought it was bigx's story

its all good....i knew what you meant.