EMB ERJ 170/175 ER/LR
Flight Attendant Current
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Inflight Event / Encounter Bird / Animal
Aircraft Aircraft Damaged; Flight Crew Landed in Emergency Condition; Flight Crew Returned To Departure Airport; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed; General Maintenance Action
Aircraft; Environment - Non Weather Related
After taking off; the left side of the plane started vibrating very loud. Then everyone heard a banging sound along with a smoky odor afterwards. My first thought was a decompression was coming; so myself and [the other Flight Attendant] called pilots immediately and they heard noise also and said they will call us right back. So they called us and said we were going to go back because they were getting indicators in the flight deck something was wrong with left engine. So Captain made PA to inform the passengers of the situation. We landed within 10 minutes. Upon landing we had passengers deplane and Maintenance came on board. They inspected the aircraft and found out that a seagull flew into the engine and damaged the left engine severely and flight was canceled.
EMB175 Flight Attendant's perspective of an engine failure at takeoff caused by the ingestion of a seagull. Flight returns safely to the departure airport.