Horizon Air flight forced to return to Alaska airport after plane strikes an eagle

A Horizon Air flight was forced to return to an Alaska airport on Christmas Eve after the plane struck an Eagle – just days after another bird strike in South Korea killed 179 people.

Officials from Alaska Airlines, which owns Horizon Air, told NBC News Horizon Air Flight 2041 took off at noon on December 24 and soon the crew “reported a bird strike.”

The flight to Fairbanks then turned around and arrived back at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage about half an hour later.

“The captain and first officer were trained for these situations and were able to land the aircraft safely without any problems,” an airline spokesperson said.

“No state of emergency has been declared.”

Passengers were then put on another plane at the airport to continue their journey to Fairbanks as the plane was taken out of service for inspection.

According to NBC News, it has since been put back into service.

‘[It’s a] Christmas Eve Story,” passenger Michelle Tatela told KTUU in the aftermath. ‘We say, “Only in Alaska do you have to wait for a new plane because an eagle flew with you.”

About half an hour after takeoff, it returned to Anchorage’s Ted Stevens International Airport

She told how they had only been in the air for a few minutes when the captain said they were turning back ‘out of an abundance of caution’.

Only after the plane landed did passengers learn that the plane had struck an eagle — the same day President Joe Biden signed a law establishing the bald eagle as the official bird of the United States.

“The eagle survived at the time,” said Tatela, whose mother and sister were visiting from Chicago. “And there were a lot of police cars around the plane.”

She said it would have been “a scarier situation” to see all the emergency vehicles if she hadn’t known the return was only because the plane hit a bird, which was taken to an Eagle Hospital with a broken wing.

“Everyone was very excited when they said the eagle had been removed and that it was going to the sanctuary,” Tatela said.

“We’re hoping for a happier ending for the eagle, but it’s a jet plane, so there’s that.”

Unfortunately, the eagle suffered a fracture in its left wing that was too extensive for rehabilitation, and it was euthanized upon arrival, said Laura Atwood, executive director of the Bird Treatment and Learning Center.

Meanwhile, Tatela said she and her family ultimately arrived in Fairbanks about four hours later than planned.

Passenger Michelle Tatela (center) told how they only learned the plane hit an Eagle after the plane landed safely at the airport

Still, the situation ended better than for the passengers of a Jeju Air plane that skidded off the runway in the city of Muan on Sunday, crashed into a concrete barrier and burst into flames.

All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 have died in one of South Korea’s worst aviation disasters, officials said.

Video of the plane’s approach shows it hitting a bird before circling the runway and attempting to land with its flaps up. Experts believe this indicates the plane suffered a hydraulic failure, which also prevented the landing gear from deploying.

Pilots explained that the plane likely lost power from at least one engine and suffered a hydraulic failure after the plane struck a bird.

After aborting an initial landing attempt due to a loss of power, the pilots landed on the runway at high speed on their second attempt – without deploying the flaps and deploying speed brakes that would normally slow the plane.

On December 30, a South Korean plane struck a bird, causing it to crash during landing and killing 179 people on board

The thrust reverser, which was used to slow the aircraft once on the ground, was also deployed on only one engine.

While the flaps and landing ear are powered by the hydraulic system, they can be manually extended in an emergency, the pilots explained.

This was also stated by leading air safety expert David Learmount Sky News that having a concrete wall at the end of the runway was “borderline criminal” and said the collision with the wall was the “defining moment” of the disaster.

He suggested that if the wall had not been there, the plane would have instead hit a fence, skidded down a road and probably stopped in a nearby field.

‘I think everyone would have still been alive… the pilots might have suffered some damage going through the security gate or something like that. But even I suspect they may have survived,” Learmount said.