A Delta jet landed LaGuardia Airport yesterday looking like it had just been in a boxing match -- bloodied and with a dent in its nose. The plane had smashed into a bird in the air.
The blood, of course, belonged to the feathered beast whose carcass dented the nose of the shuttle arriving from Boston. Besides the dent, the plane escaped serious damage and landed safely at around 6 p.m.
Witnesses, including the pilot were stunned.
"There was blood on the nose of the plane all the way up to the windshield," one airport worker told the New York Post. "There was a big dent. I saw feathers attached to the plane."
The worker said the pilot hopped out to take a look and was "amazed" at the sight. He added that he heard the impact and "thought it was a goose."
Besides the bird, no one was hurt, and the crew of Flight 1393 "followed all established procedures and landed without incident," Kent Landers, spokesman for Delta Airlines told the Post.
Bird strikes are no anomaly in the skies above New York as the world discovered following Captain Sully Sullenberger's famous Hudson River landing in January. He decided to ditch the Airbus A320 after a flock of birds busted both engines.
Local
That incident prompted the city and Port Authority to pay for the extermination of 2,000 Canada geese to the horror of bird-lovers everywhere.
