A passenger plane carrying 17 people had to make an emergency landing at Dundee Airport on Friday after hitting a bird on take off.
The Dundee to London Stansted service took off at 7.22am but just minutes into its flight, the captain came onto the tannoy to announce that they had hit a bird on the way up.
As a precaution it was decided the plane would have to turn back.
Passengers told the Tele the pilot “zig-zagged” across Fife before he made the decision to turn around back to Dundee.
Despite the concern, the Flybe flight, operated by Loganair, landed safely back in Dundee at 7.45am.
After taxiing back to the terminal, the 14 passengers were told they would have to go back into the airport while technicians took a closer look at the plane’s engine to make sure nothing had been damaged.
Colin Coupar, Unite’s regional organiser for Dundee, was one of the passengers on a business trip.
Despite the drama he said everyone had been in “good spirits”.
He said: “We had taken off towards Perth and had been zig-zagging in Fife and the captain came on and said we’d hit a bird.
“To be honest you wouldn’t have noticed anything from hitting the bird.
“The captain said there didn’t appear to be any problems, but they wanted to land again to check everything over.
“There didn’t seem to be any damage to the plane thankfully, but it had to be delayed.
“But everyone was in good spirits.”
The plane was later given the all-clear by engineers and the plane took off two hours behind schedule at 9.10am.
A Loganair spokesman said: “Loganair flight BE6621 departed Dundee enroute to London Stansted with 14 passengers and three crew onboard.
“Shortly after take-off the plane encountered a suspected bird-strike and as a precautionary measure, the pilot chose to return to Dundee.
“Upon landing safely at Dundee Airport the aircraft was inspected by a team of engineers and no damage was found.
“The aircraft has since resumed its journey.”
Bird strikes can potentially down a plane.
One of most dramatic instances came in 2009 when US Airways flight 1549 was forced to crash-land into the Hudson River in New York after it collided with a flock of geese.