Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Training / Qualification; Time Pressure; Workload
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Bird / Animal
Aircraft Aircraft Damaged; Flight Crew Returned To Departure Airport; Flight Crew Landed in Emergency Condition; Flight Crew Inflight Shutdown; General Declared Emergency
Aircraft; Chart Or Publication; Environment - Non Weather Related; Manuals
On departure climbing through approximately 3;000 FT we encountered a flock of large birds. We were not able to avoid hitting some of them. I was the pilot not flying. We took a strike to the radome and we took one through the left engine rendering it inoperative. We immediately declared an emergency and returned to the field. It happened very quickly so I ran through the checklists while the pilot flying quickly got us on the ground. There was a lot of vibration and that combined with the impacts was quite startling. While we accomplished everything required; I think it may have been more 'textbook' if we had more time and the situation wasn't as alarming. We landed uneventfully; cleared the runway and shut down the remaining engine. While the large flock may not have been avoidable; I learned something that will help me in the future. We train exclusively on the 900XPC. I am very familiar with the 900 Emergency Checklist; but I realized that the different layout of the 800XPC Checklist was disorientating for a minute. I went to the pages where I was certain the appropriate checklists were located but they were not there. While this normally would not be a big deal; under the stress of this situation it added a little further stress. I am planning on spending some time to become more familiar with 800 Emergency Checklist as well as Abnormal Single Engine Checklist layout. The new QRC checklists should help.
After takeoff an HS-125-800 struck a flock of large birds shutting down the left engine; so an emergency was declared and the flight returned to the departure airport. The crew trained on the XP900 QRH which required some adjustment because of formatting differences from the XP800 QRH onboard.