An Air New Zealand flight was forced to slam the brakes after a close encounter with birds on the runway.
Flight NZ103 was taking off from Auckland Airport, headed to Sydney when the pilot, “slammed on the brakes and the whole plane come to a halt,” a passenger told ‘Stuff’.
“We didn’t really know what had happened. People thought there might have been another plane on the runway in front of us, but fortunately that wasn’t the case…”
The pilot reportedly told passengers “a couple of birds had hit the front nose of the plane”, and that they would have to return to the terminal to get it checked over.
“The staff were amazing. Everyone kept calm. We didn’t think we were going to get out, but they managed to make sure it was all okay, and off we went.”
A spokesperson for Air New Zealand confirmed the incident happened prior to take-off and added that they are not uncommon and pilots are trained for the situation.
