Blood-Covered Pilot Continues Flying Plane After Bird Slams Into Cockpit

Oh, wow. That's a big bird. Looks like it's giving him a bit of necrotic help on the stick there.

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Of course he was going to fly, the airplane was going to continue to fly. He's just along for the ride.

In 2005, one of our students in a 152 took a turkey buzzard through the windscreen flying base during a student solo flight. To her great credit, she flew the airplane, landed and taxied back to parking. When someone asked her about it later, she said "well, what else was I going to do?"
 
Why is he wearing what looks like a painting respirator?
 
Yep. Looks like an ag plane. But the article says he was flying at 10,000' when the bird came through the windshield. Are there crops that high? Maybe he was repositioning and had to fly over the mountains? But if that was the case, why the respirator?
 
donjohnston said:
Yep. Looks like an ag plane. But the article says he was flying at 10,000' when the bird came through the windshield. Are there crops that high? Maybe he was repositioning and had to fly over the mountains? But if that was the case, why the respirator?
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1). I don’t believe a single fact in a viral headline that has been cascaded over and over. Other articles called it a military plane, likely because he was wearing a helmet.

2) The respirator is likely to keep him from gassing himself when he 180’s through the plume of pesticide he just laid down.
 
From the local news, it is a Thrush 510P and had just taken off to spray some local fields when he hit the bird. All the blood in the video is the birds and not the pilots who was not injured. The elevation of the area is 20ft above sea level.
 
Bet he wishes he had the visor down and mask on! Might've gone much differently if the bird had gone any further and actually hit him, I think.

Anyone else notice that he was taking a video at 450 feet?? Definitely sterile cockpit territory in the Warrior but I suppose for a guy that earns his pay below 50 AGL that's nosebleed-level.
 
We deal with it with relative regularity on our slice of team DOD aviation. We've had fatalities and ejections as a consequence. The front windshield was redesigned decades ago for bigger thickness as a result of fatalities to bird breaching the cockpit area at T-38 speeds.

The -38 is a bird ingestion/birdstrike magnet. When it comes to birdstrikes I much preferred my time in the Texan2. Complete nothingburgers by comparison. I've had birdstrikes through the prop arc and small bird ingestion in both airplanes respectively, thankfully no canopy breach. Two of my former co-workers have been struck or had their student struck by vultures breaching the cockpit, quite lucky neither were struck in the nugget area and lost consciousness in flight.

One of my coworkers (he should be retiring or retired by now, he went back to the IFF side a few years ago) describing his birdstrike years ago.
 
I have a bud that hit a big bird while under the hood.

It went through the prop, took out a side window and hit the stabilizer

The leading edge was bashed and “mushroomed”.

My inspection found many of the hi- shear rivets broken.

It almost took the tail off.

No donations to the Audubon Society!
 
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