Engineers were surprised to find an owl hiding inside the engine of a plane when they were on pre-flight checks.

The staff with Virgin Australia caught a small owl taking a nap and relaxing when the plane was parked in Melbourne Airport.

“This owl didn’t give a hoot where it napped!” tweeted Virgin Australia. “The cute little guy was found during our pre-flight checks.”

“Our team of engineers rescued it and it was checked out before being safely released back into the wild.”

The team of engineers rescued the bird and properly checked it before releasing it back into the wild.

The owner of Virgin, Richard Branson, read the tweet and replied: “Just when I thought I’d seen it owl… Great job team,” to which the team said, “You’re talon us!”

This isn’t the first case when a bird was caught at an airport. The same incidents happened earlier too.

Earlier this year, a stowaway myna bird managed to board a plane from Singapore to London, and no one noticed it for 12 hours. And also, earlier this month, a rogue flamingo caused a commotion at Palma de Mallorca Airport in Spain.

Bird strikes commonly happen every day, and while most of the strikes happen without consequence, they can damage the aircraft in a small percentage of cases. Sometimes bird strikes can even result in fatal accidents, 229 lives have been lost since 1988 due to planes and birds tangling with each other.

The US Airways plane is an example, that was, fortunately, landed on the Hudson River in 2009. It was brought down by a double engine failure caused by multiple bird strikes.

“Bird strikes have always been a part of aviation” and “usually cause no more than minor damage,” according to Boeing who creates many of the commercial planes flying the sky.

 

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