United Airlines plane engine shoots out fire after hitting an animal on takeoff

Dramatic video shows the fiery moments aft a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 deed an carnal connected takeoff from Denver International Airport connected Sunday.

“Every erstwhile successful a portion a small burst of occurrence (is) coming retired the close engine,” aerial postulation power warned the pilots, arsenic heard connected audio captured by the website LiveATC.net.

“Yeah, affirm, we deliberation we mislaid our close motor,” the aviator responded.

United formation 2325 took disconnected Sunday from Denver going to Edmonton, Canada, with 153 passengers and six unit members onboard.

The unit reported striking an carnal portion taking off, the FAA said successful a statement. They did not specify the animal, nevertheless rabbits were reported connected the runway astatine the clip of the incident.

“Use caution for rabbit activity,” the power operation warned respective pilots. “A rabbit was reported… heading towards your runway.,”

“We mightiness person ran them over,” a antithetic United aviator radioed the tower.

“We’re bigger than them, though,” a Frontier aviator joked.

But it was nary gag for United 2325.

“We are dealing with getting connection determination is occurrence connected our wing,” the aviator of United 2325 said aft declaring an exigency and announcing plans to ellipse and instrumentality to the airport.

The occurrence trucks responded arsenic a modular protocol, Denver Airport Public Information Officer Keylen Villagrana told CNN.

“I conscionable privation to marque definite they person the exigency cogwheel rolled retired for us,” the aviator told the aerial postulation controllers. “If you guys could cheque retired the right-side flaps, instrumentality area, each of that bully worldly and fto america cognize if determination is simply a fire.”

The level yet taxied to the gross and passengers boarded a caller level to alert to Edmonton.

Aircraft deed wildlife astatine Denver International Airport much than 800 times past year, according to information from the FAA’s Wildlife Strike Database. Most of the collisions were birds, including bald eagles, owls larks and mallards, but immoderate of the strikes included prairie dogs, bats, coyotes and rabbits.

CNN’s Hanna Park and Pete Muntean contributed to this report.

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