[kellyhound]

Cockpit footage shows Czech fighter pilot Abel Zbynek's routine flight suddenly turns potentially deadly.

During exercise Trident Juncture, a bird collided with his aircraft, punching a hole through the right wing.

Despite this, Abel resisted the urge to eject from the plane and managed to bring it safely to land.

[soyadude]

What the hell hit that? An ostrich?

[Kelseecat65]

Originally Posted by soyadude ↗

What the hell hit that? An ostrich?

No shit, that's a lot of damage!

[badassbaldbastard]

I've never seen a bird strike damage a wing like that. Usually an engine or canopy. Either the plane is made of tin or that was a big bird.

[William May]

They don't have to be big. At that velocity, when they hit, it sounds like a shotgun going off in your ear. The sound alone is massive.
Also remember that every bird that an engine swallows has a little packet of stones in it's stomach, to break up it's food. So even a small bird will do hellacious damage. I have seen numerous bird strikes on Learjets, and they range from the co-pilot being decapitated when the bird went through the windshield, to just minor dents if they hit at low speed. We had one Lear hit with 2 Canadian Geese, right on the nose. One went through the radome and into the avionics section. EVERY box in there was filled with bird meat. It looked like they had been packed with the meat. The ones that were not destroyed from the impact, were destroyed by the blood contamination. The second bird hit just at the top of the nose cowl, when through the cowl, and hit the frame 4 structure. They had to replace a lot of the skin, some of the structure, all the avionics, the radome, the nose cowl, and a lot of support structure that was bent. The worst part was taking everthing apart to get all the bird meat out and remove all the blood residue. It was NASTY!
The engineers came up with some disinfectant solution that they use to clean up dead bodies, and we treated it with that. Then rinsed the structure down. There was blood and contamination all through the wiring that was forward of the cabin. It was a MESS!
If I can find some pictures of some of them, I will post them, if anyone is interested.

[badassbaldbastard]

Originally Posted by William May ↗

If I can find some pictures of some of them, I will post them, if anyone is interested.

I'd be interested in seeing those pics if you can find them!

[nyazzip]

Originally Posted by soyadude ↗

What the hell hit that? An ostrich?

looked like a crane or stork

[nyazzip]

Originally Posted by badassbaldbastard ↗

I've never seen a bird strike damage a wing like that. Usually an engine or canopy. Either the plane is made of tin or that was a big bird.

not "tin"-aluminum. airplanes are built very, very delicately in order to be light weight.

[AceGoober]

Bird did a hell of a lot of damage.

Reminds me of an aviation joke...

It seems that NASA and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have a unique device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane’s windshield at approximately the speed the plane flies.

The theory is that if the windshield doesn’t crack from the carcass impact, it’ll survive a real collision with a bird during flight. It seems the British were very interested in this and wanted to test a windshield on a brand new, speedy locomotive they’re developing.

They borrowed the FAA’s chicken launcher, loaded the chicken and fired. The ballistic chicken shattered the windshield, went through the engineer’s chair, broke an instrument panel and embedded itself in the back wall of the engine cab. The British were stunned and asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if everything was done correctly.

The FAA reviewed the test thoroughly and had one recommendation:

“Use a thawed chicken.”