A Southwest Airlines flight to Southern California carrying passengers, including the UC Davis men’s basketball team, was forced Tuesday night to return to Sacramento after a bird struck one of its engines.
Southwest Flight 1096 had departed from the Sacramento International Airport at 5:47 p.m., according to FlightAware. Shortly after takeoff, a bird struck the left engine of the jet, said Scott Johnson, a spokesman for the county’s airport system. No injuries were reported.
The UC Davis basketball team was on its way to Hollywood Burbank Airport. The team was on a Los Angeles-area road trip to play against California State University, Northridge, on Wednesday and Cal State Fullerton on Saturday.
Scott Marsh, a radio broadcaster for UC Davis basketball and football who was on the flight, posted on his Twitter account that they heard a terrible noise coming from the engine. He said that was followed by about 10 minutes of stunned silence before the pilot calmly informed the passengers a bird had struck the plane.
“Thanks to the amazing skill and cool-headedness of our pilot crew, we were able to make a very successful emergency landing back in Sacramento,” Marsh wrote. “I have never landed before to police sirens, fire trucks and ambulances on the runway.”
The engine was still functioning, the pilot told the passengers, and the plane was returning to Sacramento. Marsh said that was followed by more silence from the passengers as “the horrendous noise” continued. He said there was one child seated next to him who thought the plane might explode.
“We did our best to tell him we were fine, but it wasn’t working,” Marsh wrote in the Twitter post. “We did not know ourselves what might happen.”
The Boeing 737-700 twin-jet, tail number N752SW, circled above Yuba County for less than an hour to burn off fuel before landing at the airport without incident at 6:19 p.m.
The passengers on the flight boarded another Southwest plane, tail number N452WN, and departed Sacramento at 8:01 p.m. Tuesday on its way to Burbank.
Sacramento, which sits beneath the giant bird migratory route known as the Pacific Flyway, has one of the highest bird strike rates in the country. Since 1990, more than 3,400 bird strikes have been reported, according to FAA records, although that number has been reduced in recent years by airport biologists’ efforts to shoo the birds out of harm’s way.
Strikes generally pose much bigger problems for birds than to humans. In roughly 9 out of 10 strikes, there is no damage to the jet. When there is damage, it often is minor. Sacramento airport officials say they have no record of any human injury from a bird strike.
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