You’ve heard of bird strikes before, I’m sure. That’s when a plane engine is destroyed by a flying bird that gets sucked into its machinery, gumming up the works with bird bones and viscera. It’s what brought down the plane that was famously emergency landed in the Hudson River by Captain Sully Sullenberger as he piloted US Airways Flight 1549 on January 15, 2009.
Bird strikes make sense. Planes are in the sky. Birds are in the sky. The two are bound to meet. Rabbits, on the other hand, are not skybound. They are rather terrestrial, as far as I’m aware.
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Yet, this past Sunday, April 13, a United Airlines flight out of Denver International Airport had to emergency land soon after takeoff when a rabbit got sucked into the engine, causing the engine to catch fire.
The plane was a Boeing 737-800. It was loaded with 153 passengers and six crew members. It was on the way to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It had just taken off when suddenly, Engine Two started malfunctioning. Describing the scene to Good Morning America, passenger Scott Wolff said, “There was a loud bang, and a significant vibration in the plane. Every few moments, there was a backfire coming from the engine, a giant fireball behind it.”
A United Airlines Flight Was Forced to Land After A Rabbit Got Sucked Into the Engine
The pilot gets on the radio with air traffic control and, according to LiveATC audio documents obtained by ABC News, rather confidently informs them that the plane is heading back and should be inspected for an engine fire because, and he was rather confident about this, a rabbit had been sucked into the engine. “Rabbit through the number 2, that’ll do it,” the pilot said.
How he knew it was a rabbit is anyone’s guess; rather than the much more likely bird is anyone’s guess. It’s not like rabbits it sucked into plane engines very often. According to the FAA, wildlife strikes are not rare. There are over 20,000 in 2024 alone. But how many of those are specifically caused by rabbits? More than you’d think!
The FAA makes it pretty easy for anyone to look up what animals are striking planes. The department has a nifty search tool on its website. All you’ve got to do is select “rabbits” from its extensive list of animals that have caused plane strikes, and you’ll see that in 2024, there were four plane strikes caused by rabbits.
One of them happened on August 2, 2024, at Denver International Airport. There have been 75 recorded rabbit strikes in the United States since 1992. Which, I guess, would be 76 after the Denver incident this past weekend.
Cottontail rabbits can be found all over Denver, and more broadly in the state of Colorado, just like how raccoons and possums are critters that commonly roam through other major American cities. Pilots must know that rabbits are a known threat, thus explaining why the pilot was so calm rather than shouting something like “CAN RABBITS FLY NOW!?”
The flight returned safely to Denver, and the passengers were transferred to a new plane
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