How a small bird managed to take over a Delta flight

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How a small bird managed to take over a Delta flight
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[size=20px]By Avi Selk December 31, 201[/size]

[size=12px]On late Saturday morning, a bird flew out of the cold Detroit sky, across an airfield and into the cockpit of a jetliner bound south for Atlanta.[/size]

[size=12px]Some believe it was a sparrow. Some, a hummingbird. A Delta Air Lines spokesman referred to it only as a “stowaway” — and, in any case, it would be a long delay before anyone on Flight 1943 could catch the thing to get a look at it.[/size]

[size=12px]Shane Perry, a minister with a connection and a speech to make, was waiting to board when he saw the pilot walk off the jet bridge and whisper something to the ticket agent.[/size]

[size=12px]“He said, ‘In my 18 years of doing this, this is the first time I’ve ever seen this,’ ” Perry told The Washington Post. “There’s a bird in the cockpit.”[/size]

[size=12px]The ticket agent laughed at this. It seemed funny to Perry, too, at that point. He boarded the plane with the other passengers and watched as yellow-vested workers rummaged through the cockpit.[/size]

[size=12px]They didn’t find the bird in the first few minutes, or the next few. The pilot stood in the aisle, hands in pockets, and watched like everyone else.[/size]

[size=12px]An hour later, Perry was still sitting in a grounded airplane, watching winter birds flit around outside his window while the stowaway stayed hidden in the cockpit.[/size]

[size=12px]There was some talk that morning of moving everyone to a different plane, but, eventually, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom and announced that the bird must have left.[/size]

[size=12px]“The explanation was the bird had apparently flown out of some type of hatch under the plane, which seemed strange to me,” Perry said.[/size]

[size=12px]He recalled the pilot telling the passengers: “We’re going to take off, but if I hear any chirping in the cockpit, I’ll turn around.”[/size]

[size=12px]“I took that as a joke,” Perry said.[/size]

[size=12px][A woman ordered canaries to brighten her home. The USPS delivered a box of ‘bird carnage.’][/size]

[size=12px]Now accounts begin to differ again.[/size]

[size=12px]Perry doesn’t think they were in the air more than five minutes before the bird made its second appearance. The Delta spokesman described the time as “shortly after takeoff.”[/size]

[size=12px]For Brian Buonassissi, a traveling DJ in the middle of an exhausting New York-to-Detroit-to-Atlanta-to-Florida connection, it felt as if they’d been flying for an hour before the captain came back on the intercom and said: “The bird is back.”[/size]

[size=12px]“The bird is flying around the cockpit,” he announced, as Perry recalled it.[/size]

[size=12px]If the hunt for this elusive bird — which Buonassissi thought the pilot said was a hummingbird, though Perry was not sure — had begun in the morning as a comedy, it seemed less funny now at midday, thousands of feet above the ground.[/size]

[size=12px]Seated close behind the cockpit door, Perry imagined what might happen if the bird flapped into an instrument panel.[/size]

[size=12px]Back in Aisle 14, Buonassissi heard his seatmates break into a chorus of groans, astonished laughs and “what did he say”s at the announcement of the bird’s return and what it meant for the 100-odd humans on board.[/size]

[size=12px]“Out of an abundance of caution, the Captain made the decision to return to Detroit to avoid a potential distraction during flight,” the Delta spokesman said in a statement.[/size]

[size=12px]Buonassissi thinks the bird, like everyone on the flight, made it halfway to Georgia before the plane turned back. A flight tracker shows the plane made a big loop around Detroit and landed back where it started, shortly after noon.[/size]

[size=12px]And then the men in yellow vests came back on board, and the search resumed.[/size]

[size=12px][How a wife’s suspicions of infidelity diverted an entire flight][/size]

[size=12px]By now, people were in danger of missing their connections. So Buonassissi and a couple of other passengers walked back to the gate to try to find other flights.[/size]

[size=12px]Perry stayed in his seat and watched a somewhat disgruntled-looking pilot watch the workers search for the bird.[/size]

[size=12px]Buonassissi got back on the plane, having decided that there was no faster way than this to get to his DJ gig.[/size]

[size=12px]A few more minutes passed, and then he saw it:[/size]

[size=12px]A worker came out of the cockpit. In his arms was a towel. In the towel was a very small bird that had managed to ground a 55-ton flying machine.[/size]

[size=12px]The plane took off again in the early afternoon. Perry made it to his speech, and Buonassissi made his connection.[/size]

[size=12px]“The bird was safely removed and set free,” the spokesman wrote.[/size]

[size=12px]If it ever gets to Georgia, we won’t know.[/size]

[size=12px]Read more:[/size]

[size=12px]British Airways apologizes after passengers say bedbug-infested flight left them ‘covered in bites’[/size]

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This is pretty much what passengers saw of the search for the bird. (Courtesy of Brian Buonassissi)