Flight makes emergency landing after apparent rabbit strike

ABC News

✈️ RABBIT vs. JET ENGINE: United Airlines flight makes EMERGENCY LANDING in Denver after engine FIRE sparked by a wildlife strike—yes, a rabbit!  ⚠️ Exclusive footage of the chaos as crew averts disaster. Can wildlife really down a jet? Share & Follow for shocking aviation risks! #UnitedAirlines #PlaneEmergency #RabbitStrike #AviationSafety #DenverAirport #WildlifeHazard

Transcript

00:00We're going to turn now to that terrifying video of an engine fire on a United Airlines flight

00:04forced to make an emergency landing in Denver. It appears to have been caused by an extremely rare

00:08rabbit strike. Transportation correspondent Gil Benitez has more for us. Good morning, Gil.

00:13Hey, Michael. Good morning. Yeah, we hear about bird strikes in planes all the time,

00:17but this time we're talking about a rabbit on the runway and it got into the engine right at takeoff.

00:24This morning, an unusual animal encounter causing a scare in the air.

00:29A rabbit somehow making it into the right engine of United Airlines flight 2325 from Denver to

00:37Edmonton Sunday, right as the Boeing 737 with 159 people on board was taking off. There was a loud

00:44bang and a significant vibration in the plane. We proceeded to still climb. Harrowing video from

00:51inside the cabin showing large flames shooting from that engine. Every few moments, there was a

00:57backfire coming from the engine and giant fireball behind it. Everybody in the plane then started to

01:02panic. The soaring blaze visible from the ground. My stomach dropped and I just thought I'm going to

01:08see a plane go down.

01:11It was quickly responding to malfunctions in the cockpit. At one point, thinking the fire was impacting the

01:17landing gear. The landing gear, we have indication there is no locked up. The plane turning around after about 75 minutes in

01:25the air. And United tells us that the flight returned safely to Denver. Now wildlife strikes in general, they're

01:31actually very common. The FAA says there were more than 20,000 of them last year in America. But when you're

01:37talking specifically about rabbits, there were only four. So this was extremely rare. Robin

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