April 19th, 2012

Ali Velshi on JFK emergency landing

CNN’s Ali Velshi describes the emergency landing of his flight at JFK  due to a bird strike.

ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT (via telephone):  Wolf, I was on my way to Los Angeles.  We were a few moments delayed from a 3:00 departure.  It was Delta flight 1063, fully loaded plane, 172 passengers, seven working crew, lots of other crew on the flight well.  It’s a Boeing 757.

We took off.  It was seconds into the takeoff and there was a loud grinding noise and the plane started shaking a little bit.  Much more of a shake than you would typically hear when they’re retracting the landing gear.  Moments later, the cabin started filling with smoke.

It was unclear what was going on.  The captain then came on a few minutes later and it appears that there had been a bird strike and he then turned back and it looked like we did a fly bye for the inspection and we were landing back JFK, not much longer after we took off.

I then spoke to a passenger sitting in the first row who for some reason was using his iPad to film the takeoff, and he’s filming it and all of a sudden, he heard — we’re in the air and these birds fly by on the ride side of the plane and seconds later, not seconds later, within a second this grinding noise starts.

There are a whole bunch of people inspecting the plane.  It’s on the ground at JFK.  They are looking at that right side engine.  So, it does appear that something struck it, created that smoke, but a very smooth landing.  No panic on the flight.  The crew was fantastic about it.  Got everybody — they were ready and clearly at the ready to do whatever was necessary, and whatever degree of evacuation was necessary.  They’re on the ground.

As we got there, it was one of the warm well Christmas you get, lots of EMS, fire, police purpose they were ready to spray the plane down to ensure there wasn’t going to be a fire from that engine.  No need to do so in the end and I would say, about 15 to 20 minutes later, we were off the plane.

I’m now on a bus pulling back to the terminal.  Who knows what happens next?  But I’m going to be a little nicer to everybody for the rest of the day, Wolf.