A swan must have put passengers and employees in a fowl mood at Heathrow Airport when operations shut down temporarily on Monday, November 3, 2014 for safety reasons.
The stubborn bird refused to leave the airport — which is one of the airports which serves the greater London metropolitan area — ruffling the feathers of airport workers who tried to get a wing up on it by attempting to shoo it away so that airport operations could resume.
Caution was exercised because bird strikes have been known to kill the birds and disable airplane engines, placing occupants aboard the airplane in danger — such as such as when Chesley Sullenberger, a captain for US Airways, was forced to land an Airbus A320 aircraft in the Hudson River after it struck a flock of Canada geese during its initial ascent after departing from LaGuardia Airport in New York in January of 2009, disabling the aircraft and killing two of the birds. The quick thinking and actions of Sullenberger — combined with his years of experience and training — resulted in a rare yet successful ditching of a commercial aircraft on water where no one died.
I was fortunate (?) to experience a “bird strike” myself inside of a flight simulator a few years ago, feeling the airplane shake simultaneously while hearing the dull “whomp” of a bird being sucked into an engine during take-off — leaving me feeling glad that I had never experienced that in a real situation.
The video found here captures much of the incident; but for entertainment purposes, I would recommend muting the sound on this video…
…and instead listening to one of these silent movie scores while watching the video:
Four airport workers finally captured the defiant swan and transported it away, ending the flap which allowed flights to resume.
Video and screen shot from the video ©2014 by Dantorp Aviation.
