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A flight leaving Little Rock National Airport was forced to make an emergency landing when the plane struck several birds. No one was injured--but passengers on board called it a scary flight. Just imagine your sitting in your seat, the plane has just taken off, and all of a sudden you hear a funny noise in the engine and the plane seems to drop. That's exactly what happened to the passengers on board a Northwest Airlines Flight Sunday night. And just wait until you hear how many birds they hit. It's quite a story. (Jean Resnevic, passenger) "As soon as we left the ground, the engine made kind of a rumbling noise. And the plane, instead of smoothing flying up, kind of jumped down to the left And a couple minutes later they told us we were making an emergency landing." When Northwest Airlines Flight #5808 made an emergency landing Sunday night--this is what the passengers saw when they left the plane--blood streaks on the cockpit windows and across the nose of the plane. (Resnevic) "I went up and talked to the pilot afterwards and I was asking him what had happened and he said when all the birds hit the windshield he sort of, they both ducked down because they thought for sure that all the birds were coming into the cockpit." Turns out--this plane struck and killed 139 Starlings. Their bodies covered the ground--closing one runway for roughly 40 minutes. (T.J. Williams, Little Rock National Airport) "This makes the second bird strike we've had in three months. The first of the two was a much smaller quantity of birds as compared to this quantity of birds." Normally under FAA (web|news) guidelines--the airport would be required to conduct a wildlife hazard assessment. But they say--because they already conducted one of those assessments after the last strike three months ago--they will not conduct another one after this strike of more than one hundred birds.
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