Bird Ingestion

I got a job at Allison Gas Turbine Division of GM (now Rolls Royce Allison) in 1980. The job was probably one of the most fortuitous and important things that happened to me. Sure I nearly squandered the opportunity several times - as I was a mad man at the time - but managed to have a good run there.
One of my first jobs was maintaining one of the accident data files. I was a popular kid – everyone wanted to see the reports. Because AGTD engines were used in helicopters – there were frequent incidents. The year I maintained the database there were 400 incidents in 1980. Everyone liked to read the reports. "Bird Ingestion" and "Bird Strike were two of my favorite reason codes.
At AGTD they used to test the engines by throwing frozen chickens into the intake. I never got to observe this form of testing and it was not done very often.
I just missed a flight that left Houghton close to ten years ago that hit a herd of deer on take off. The propeller on one side was torn off and ripped the fuselage – no injuries. They served ground venison on the flight (not really). Actually another interesting aside – or not – the regional airline here doesn’t have repair facilities – so they have essentially a flying mechanics shop in a Dash-8 aircraft that flies around doing major repairs – they had to fly in parts and mechanics to repair the plane. The Dash-8 could bring in an entire engine assembly.
Well today we got to see an amazing, amazing amount of good and bad luck - dual bird ingestion - extremely rare; being able to do a successful no power water landing - just as rare if not rarer.