Basketball Charter Flight Hits... Something

Yazata

Yazata

Valued Senior Member
This was a jet, carrying the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team to Chicago, reportedly cruising at roughly 30,000 feet, when it collided with a small object. The plane landed safely, nobody was hurt, but the nose radar fairing was kind of bashed in.

Speculation is that it was a large bird. Except... this was 30,000 feet up.

There are a small handful of birds in the world that can fly that high, but none in North America as far as I know. The highest-flying birds around here can maybe reach 20,000 ft.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't Venus. I don't think it was aliens either. I'm not certain what it was.

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Damn. It made quite a dent! I'm never stepping foot on another airplane.

You're right about no birds in North America flying that high. The Griffon Vulture flies at 37,000 ft for some unknown reason, but they live over in Africa.
 
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Yup. A bird is somewhat implausible.

Still orders of magnitude more plausible than a UFO.

No one's saying it wasn't a UFO (as Project BlueBook was so find of saying) - but, again, think horses before pegasi.
 
Yazata said:
This was a jet, carrying the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team to Chicago, reportedly cruising at roughly 30,000 feet, when it collided with a small object. The plane landed safely, nobody was hurt, but the nose radar fairing was kind of bashed in.

Speculation is that it was a large bird. Except... this was 30,000 feet up.
Click to expand...
Do you have a link for that? By that I mean that this occurred at 30,000 feet?

Everything I have read about it says that the damage was done as the plane was descending for landing after a turbulent flight.
 
The difference between the OP plane and the other pictures is that there is no fractures, no "starring" of the fuselage. This is indicative of a low-speed impact.

Probably a tarmac boo-boo.
 
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