Sir Elton John's private jet was forced to make an 'unorthodox' manoeuvre to avoid a bird strike during take-off at Farnborough Airport last month. The 78-year-old singer was aboard the Boeing 737 with his family when pilot Duncan Gillespie spotted a hawk diving towards the aircraft.
Gillespie, who has flown Elton for years, said the plane had reached V1—the maximum speed at which a take-off can be safely aborted—when he saw the bird. Instead of rotating as normal, he delayed the climb to pass under the hawk, avoiding what he described as a 'major incident'.
In a Facebook post, Gillespie explained: 'For the first time in my flying career, I made the decision to delay getting airborne to pass under the bird. My colleague and I were both of the clear opinion that if we’d have rotated when we should have, we’d have taken the hawk through the left-hand engine.' He added that only a human could have made such a decision, saving millions in potential damages.
This is not the first aviation scare for the Rocket Man star. In 2022, his jet suffered a hydraulic failure at 10,000ft, forcing an emergency landing after three attempts. Witnesses described the plane being buffeted by strong winds before finally touching down.
