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“This Could Be It”: Passenger on Possible Bird Strike at Sacramento Airport

A United Airlines flight taking off to Denver from Sacramento International Airport caused sparks and flames and was forced to turn around Friday morning because of a possible bird strike.

The event on Flight 1596 was reported around 5:30 a.m., Sacramento Fire Department spokesman-firefighter Roberto Padilla told the Sacramento Bee.

Many passengers told NBC affiliate KCRA that the Boeing 737 lit up with sparks and flames.

One of those passengers was KCRA meteorologist Eileen Javora. She wrote on her Facebook page that she yelled, "fire, fire," buried her head into the passenger sitting next to her and thought to herself, "this could be it."

"The plane never lost altitude, we never dipped side to side," she said, "but there was certainly a fire on the engine on the right side of the plane."

Several passengers who came off the plane also told KCRA that they saw smoke and flames, which made a lot of people start yelling.

At one point, Javora said a flight attendant came out with a fire extinguisher. All of it, however, lasted "about 10 seconds," Javora said.

In a statement, United Airlines said the flight landed safely after "our pilots reported a possible aircraft bird strike."

The plane taxied to the gate and all 129 passengers and crew members were escorted to the gate area. 

There have been about 142,000 "wildlife strikes" with civil aircraft in the United States between 1990 and 2013, the most recent year available, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. In that time period, 62 planes were destroyed or damaged and 25 people were killed because of the strikes.

Sacramento International Airport has had more bird strikes that any other California airport, according to the FAA, as it is located along the Pacific Flying, a major bird migration path.
 

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