Man, Boeing and United can’t seem to catch a break. Things are going wrong even when it isn’t their fault, and now innocent bunnies are being killed. No one is exactly sure how this happened, but some poor rabbit made its way into the right engine of United Flight 2325 from Denver to Edmonton last weekend. Things, as you may have imagined, went poorly for both the rabbit and the engine.
The strike most likely happened as the Boeing 737-800 was taking off at the Denver International Airport with 153 passengers and six crew members on board. Folks onboard who spoke with ABC News said they heard a “loud bang” and felt a “significant vibration” as the plane attempted to climb. Video from inside the cabin shows huge balls of flames shooting out of the right engine. Here’s more of what passengers experienced onboard the flight:
“Every few moments there was a backfire coming from the engine, a giant fire ball behind it. Everybody in the plane then started to panic,” [passenger Scott] Wolff said.
Wyatt McCurry saw the fire shooting from the plane while on the ground. “My stomach dropped, and I just thought ‘I’m going to see a plane go down’.”
Wabbit hunting season for Boeing
The plane quickly turned around and headed back to Denver after traveling just 203 miles over the 43-minute flight, according to information posted on FlightAware. From the looks of it, the plane landed without much incident and passengers were brought back to the gate about an hour and 13 minutes after they left.
LiveATC audio, looked over by ABC News, shows that the flight crew asked that the plane be looked over because of the engine fire.
“Rabbit through the number 2, that’ll do it,” a pilot said over the radio.
A spokesperson for United told ABC that the airline lined up a new aircraft to get customers where they needed to be, which was — for whatever reason — Edmonton, Canada.
Wildlife strikes aren’t exactly uncommon when it comes to air travel. The FAA reported over 20,000 in the U.S. alone last year, according to ABC News. However, the vast majority of those incidents are bird strikes since, you know, the plane is in the air. Rabbit strikes are exceedingly rare, with just four reported in all of 2024. As it so happens, one of those four was also at Denver.
