jade3•2mo agoMost Upvoted

I finally got a call to help with a plane that landed with a duck in the engine

Last Thursday at the small airfield in Bakersfield, a Cessna 172 came in sounding rough, and we found a mallard wedged in the cowling. The pilot said he saw a flock on takeoff and heard a thump. We spent two hours picking out feathers and checking for damage, and the whole shop smelled like a pond. Has anyone else had to deal with a bird strike that left such a, well, specific mess?

3 comments

3 Comments

colemartinez2mo ago

We had a Canada goose go through a Piper's prop at our field in Daytona back in 2019. The cleanup took most of a day and we were finding greasy feathers in the hangar for a week. That pond smell is something you never forget, it gets right into your clothes.

faithb782mo ago

Ugh, that greasy feather mess sounds brutal. I helped a buddy clean his truck after he hit a deer once, and that smell of wet animal and engine just baked into the seats. Had to rent a steam cleaner three times before it was gone.

jakep241mo ago

Woah, I gotta say that's wild but it also makes me wonder about something nobody's brought up - what about the duck's family? I mean, mallards mate for life and hang out in flocks. That bird probably had a partner waiting nearby, and now they're just gone. The pilot's lucky the engine didn't catch fire from the impact, but I can't help thinking about the natural side of all this too.