14 DAY TRIAL // On Tuesday, a Turkish Airlines plane traveling from Istanbul to Nevşehir engaged in a head-to-head combat with a bird. The bird was obliterated and obviously lost this round. Still, the aircraft was too left pretty shaken.
As evidenced by the photos included in the gallery below, the impact with the bird pushed the plane's nose cone outside-in, the result being one freakishly big dent.
Before you ask, it wasn't a frozen turkey that the aircraft collided with. Or a genetically engineered eagle the size of a school bus. Rather, it was a run-of-the-mill feathered creature of the sky.
Unfortunately, it remains unclear exactly what species the bird belonged to. This is because, when it hit the plane, it disintegrated and all that was left to testify to the clash was a blood spatter.
The good news is that, apart from the bird, nobody was injured in this collision. Although not quite its former shape, the Boeing 737-800 managed to make a safe landing.
Once the aircraft was back on the ground, the 125 passengers aboard it left and the plane was towed to a hangar where workers got busy trying to put it back together and restore its looks.
Plane noses are designed to bend when hit
In an interview with the press, a spokesperson for Turkish Airlines explained that plane noses are designed to bend when hitting something, hence the extent of the damage suffered by the Boeing 737-800.
The reason planes are engineered to have such fragile noses is that this helps absorb the force of potential impacts, thus keeping the rest of the aircraft safe, DM informs.
“The nose area of a plane is constructed by soft materials to minimize the impact of such hits. Therefore, such standard deformation occurs as a natural result of such incidents," the spokesperson said.
While hits to the nose, the wings and the hull do not pose a threat to planes, having birds crash with engines can translate into serious technical failures.
