Risk Management Magazine

This goes to show that the mission is not over simply because the aircraft have landed. The task force had set out on one mission and created a new one. The end state was never met.

Striking a 150-pound deer with your vehicle can cause substantial damage, maybe even resulting in a total loss. Now imagine what a 5-pound bird impacting an aircraft traveling at 120 knots or greater can do.

My co-pilot and I were on the final leg of a three-leg mission. We’d taken off from Barranquilla on the northern coast and were flying south to Bogota. Just about halfway along the 1.5-hour route at 26,000 feet, I looked out my right-side window and noticed streaks of fluid around the No. 2 engine.