The fowl odor meant either a good meal or big trouble was cooking.
A “very big bird” got sucked into an engine on a JetBlue plane taking off at Kennedy Airport yesterday, forcing the jet back — and convincing some passengers there was hot food aboard.
Aruba-bound JetBlue flight 757 — carrying 104 passengers, two pilots and three flight attendants — landed safely at 12:30 p.m., a half-hour after a bird strike was reported in the Airbus A320’s No. 2 engine, officials said.
“Suddenly the plane smelled like chicken,” said passenger Gina Vicinanza, 50. “I thought, ‘Wow! They have hot food on this plane.’ ”
Others reported a similar sensory buzz.
“It smelled like burned turkey,” said passenger J.R. Meceli, adding the pilot made a “perfect” landing.
But Bob Flynn, 35, of Greenwich, Conn., couldn’t believe it when the pilot announced the problem.
“He said it was a very big bird,” Flynn said. “Nobody was scared. Everybody moaned when we had to come back to JFK.”
JetBlue spokesman Alex Headrick said passengers and crew were all put onto a different plane that left the gate at JFK just after 3 p.m.
At least 13 bird strikes have been reported at JFK since the beginning of the year, Federal Aviation Administration records show. Five of the strikes were with JetBlue planes.