You Will Be Amazed To See What Other Flying Object Put This Massive Dent in a Descending Plane

10 May, 2015 by Jennifer Van Laar

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You’d never know it by the pictures, but this airliner was damaged by nothing more than a… bird.

#BirdStrike impressionnant sur un B737 @TurkishAirlines #TK2004 #AvGeek pic.twitter.com/kIybRKFy2j

— Flight-Report ✈ (@flight_report) May 5, 2015

The Turkish Airlines flight TK2004 was struck by the bird while landing in Nevşehir, Turkey from Istanbul.

Thankfully, the pilot was able to land the 70 ton domestic flight successfully and none of the 125 passengers were injured.

A spokesperson for Turkish Airlines explained to Mashable that, despite what looks like alarming impairment, the damage isn’t actually shocking because the nose cone of a plane is very soft.

Dr. Ali Genc, Turkish Airlines senior vice president of media relations stated in an e-mail that the nose, “of a plane is being constructed by soft materials (composite) to minimalize the impact of such hits. Therefore, such standard/normal deformation occurs as a natural result of such incidents.”

Though this incident wasn’t particularly dangerous, airliner-bird collisions can be quite perilous.
As Dr. Genc comments, “The critical bird hits in aviation [are] the ones that occur on the engine area,” but “any other area of the aircraft than the engine area, such as [the nose cone], wings, hull and etc. are not [at] risk by bird hit.”

Phew. Can you imagine the reactions of the passengers who got off that plane, then turned around and saw the nose?