Geese smacked into a JetBlue plane taking off from Westchester Airport last night, forcing the pilots to make an immediate emergency landing.
“We got to come back. We hit two big geese,” a pilot aboard Flight 571 to West Palm Beach, Fla., radioed to controllers after the plane took off at 6:45 p.m. “We are declaring an emergency.”
The pilots made it just six miles northwest of the airport before turning around. They were back on the ground seven minutes later.
“JetBlue 571, nice to have you back,” a relieved controller radioed as the plane touched down at 6:52.
The geese smashed into the jet’s windshield.
“I was petrified,’’ said passenger Janice Hilbrink, of White Plains. “Seriously very frightened.
“I heard the noise. It was very loud and the plane had a lot of turbulence. The pilot told us the windshield was cracked.’’
When she got off the plane, “the whole front of it was covered in bird.’’
The jet, an Embraer 190, was carrying 54 passengers and four crew. The passengers were put on another plane for Florida.
Planes at Westchester Airport are highly vulnerable to bird strikes, said biologist Steve Garber, who once ran the Port Authority’s wildlife-control program.
“It’s on a lake, and the grass that’s there — it’s crawling with geese,” said Garber. “They have all these wetlands right on the airport, and nobody seems to care.”
Flight 571 was the second bird-related emergency in the New York region in less than a week.
Last Thursday, a Los Angeles-bound Delta Boeing 757 hit birds as it took off from Kennedy, and also made an immediate emergency landing.
Kennedy is next to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, and US Department of Agriculture experts are in a 2-year-old dispute with the National Park Service over keeping geese and other birds away.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) yesterday introduced a bill that would force officials to speed up bird-removal plans.
It would also require the removal of Canada geese from the Jamaica Bay refuge during the birds’ molting season in June and July, when they lose their feathers and can’t fly — making them easy to catch.
“We cannot afford to sit back and wait for a catastrophe to occur before cutting through bureaucratic red tape between federal agencies,” Gillibrand said.
Additional reporting by Gerry Shields
in Washington