We pushed out of the gate a touch late, and were held up on the tarmac due to traffic inbound to MSP, but within a couple of minutes the pilots had the engines maxed out and we were moving down the runway.
Before our front wheels lifted off, the engine on the starboard side started shaking in a most unnatural way. We happened to be sitting right on top of it:
I've done enough travel to know that something was clearly wrong. Likewise, our climb was not at all normal, and the pilots were gassing up and then letting off on the engines. Sure enough, a couple of minutes into it, our pilot came on and said we likely hit a bird at take off, and that we needed to head back to the airport. And that's exactly what we did. Here's our flight path:
When we got on the ground the pilot reported that we did indeed suck in a bird (a seagull) as there was evidence on both the runway and in the engine. As for the engine itself, it had suffered "substantial damage." Our plane wasn't going anywhere except for in the shop:
While I knew we were likely OK (we were on an Airbus, and they can fly just fine on one engine), the shaking of the plane was so unnatural and was quite unnerving. It was great to be back on the ground again.
We ended up making the news (OK, I admit it was a slower news day), but all is well that ends well:
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