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Airplane with Attorney General Long on board hits coyote
By By JON WALKER
jwalker@argusleader.com
PUBLISHED: November 16, 2006
An airplane with Attorney General Larry Long on board struck a coyote while landing in Watertown.
“You could feel the thump and some folks said they’d heard it. It was pretty obvious something had happened,” Long said.
Officials weren’t ready to call the incident Tuesday night a first for South Dakota, but it is rare. South Dakota has 75,000 coyotes, by one estimate. But they’re secretive, solitary and usually too smart to get in the way of airplanes, unlike birds that regularly get sucked into jet engines.
“They’re generally pretty wary. If there’s a noise, they’ll certainly run away,” said Ben Chambers, a Game, Fish and Parks conservation officer in Watertown.
The flight, Mesaba 3183, was on a Saab prop-jet with 22 passengers aboard. It was en route from Minneapolis to Watertown and Pierre. “The crew landed the aircraft safely and there never was any danger to passengers or crew,” said Elizabeth Costello, director of communications for Mesaba in Minneapolis.
The plane’s nose landing gear struck the coyote. The animal died but not before cracking a taxi light, damage that idled the plane overnight until a mechanic arrived the next day.
Long was returning from a meeting in Florida of Republican attorneys general.
Sounds like the Yote who was on The Biggest Loser must of hit the plane to cause all that damage ;D
Also found the usually too smart to get in the way of airplanes, quite funny ;D
By By JON WALKER
jwalker@argusleader.com
PUBLISHED: November 16, 2006
An airplane with Attorney General Larry Long on board struck a coyote while landing in Watertown.
“You could feel the thump and some folks said they’d heard it. It was pretty obvious something had happened,” Long said.
Officials weren’t ready to call the incident Tuesday night a first for South Dakota, but it is rare. South Dakota has 75,000 coyotes, by one estimate. But they’re secretive, solitary and usually too smart to get in the way of airplanes, unlike birds that regularly get sucked into jet engines.
“They’re generally pretty wary. If there’s a noise, they’ll certainly run away,” said Ben Chambers, a Game, Fish and Parks conservation officer in Watertown.
The flight, Mesaba 3183, was on a Saab prop-jet with 22 passengers aboard. It was en route from Minneapolis to Watertown and Pierre. “The crew landed the aircraft safely and there never was any danger to passengers or crew,” said Elizabeth Costello, director of communications for Mesaba in Minneapolis.
The plane’s nose landing gear struck the coyote. The animal died but not before cracking a taxi light, damage that idled the plane overnight until a mechanic arrived the next day.
Long was returning from a meeting in Florida of Republican attorneys general.
Sounds like the Yote who was on The Biggest Loser must of hit the plane to cause all that damage ;D
Also found the usually too smart to get in the way of airplanes, quite funny ;D
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