British fighter lost cockpit glass, suspected to have collided with a bird

On January 23, the British Air Force announced that a Typhoon multi-role fighter had landed safely at Coningsby base after encountering an “air emergency”, suspected of being hit by a bird while flying over the North Sea. The pilot was not injured after the incident.

“The radio scanner captured the pilot’s contact, he announced that he had encountered an emergency situation due to the loss of the cockpit glass. The Typhoon fighter was escorted by his teammates back to base without the cockpit glass cover. They flew very low and at a lower speed than normal,” said Richard Boettcher, a photographer present at Coningsby airport when the plane landed.

The British Air Force later confirmed that the pilot decided to release the cockpit cover after the incident, but did not give a reason.

The Typhoon fighter’s cockpit glass consists of two parts, the rear panel is larger in size and uses a hinge to lift and lower for the pilot to get in and out. The front panel is in the form of a windshield and is fixed to the fuselage frame.

The rear cockpit glass can be ejected from the aircraft, a function often used in cases where the pilot needs to quickly leave the aircraft but does not activate the ejection seat.

Cockpit glass is highly durable and designed to withstand bird strikes, but can still be seriously damaged if the plane flies fast and hits large birds.

“Another possibility is that the collision damaged the cockpit canopy ejection mechanism, which could endanger the pilot in case he needed to eject the emergency chair, so he actively activated the ejection dose to separate it from the cockpit. aircraft”, writer Kai Greet of the military aviation website Aviationist judgment.

Eurofighter Typhoon is a twin-engine multi-role fighter launched in 2001, has a maximum speed of 2,495 km/h, a flight ceiling of nearly 17 km and can carry more than 9 tons of weapons. As of May 2024, the British Air Force has 137 Typhoons in service.

The British Air Force has encountered many incidents in recent days involving the most modern fighters in service.

A British F-35B stealth fighter was damaged on January 20 after hitting a bird, forcing the pilot to return to land at the base to ensure safety. A Typhoon fighter last week also lost a Litening reconnaissance and targeting complex worth about 1.4 million USD during a training flight in East Yorkshire, eastern England.