My name is Gary and I live in Camarillo, California just outside of the Los Angeles area and I’m
a private pilot with a multiengine instrument rating.
I've got around twelve thirteen hundred hours total time.
The airplane I was flying was a Beechcraft Baron 1973 model that I had just purchased
from a surgeon who lived in Florida.
I guess this was my third leg, my final leg actually from Casa Grande, AZ to my home base
of Camarillo, California which is relatively short flight there…
about two hours.
It was a beautiful day.
Still cool in the morning.
Not a cloud in the sky.
Fairly normal departure from Casa Grande.
Altitude around twenty five hundred feet.
I was climbing up through about 4000-4500 feet when I noticed a big bird kind of up
and off to the right.
You know I thought it was unusual and it whizzed by pretty quickly.
And then within about a second or two of seeing that bird another bird actually hit the windshield.
It hit kind of up in the upper right corner of the co-pilot area and there was a large
kind of explosion and the window completely shattered.
And the bird came into the cockpit and hit me on the right side of my face.
And the bird went by and it ended up in the half shelf.
I was immediately blinded.
I could not see out of the right eye.
It just swelled up but I couldn’t see well out of the left eye either because my sunglasses
had been torn off.
I was wearing a hat and a headset and they’d also flown off and it was pretty hard to see.
And what I remember was there was a tremendous amount of noise just coming in and there wasn’t
a lot of wind but there was a tremendous amount of noise and my first reaction was that I
was going to crash into a hill or something because I was actually climbing up a beam
maybe some 5,000 foot peaks.
I immediately pulled the power back, leveled the airplane off and then I looked around
and thought well I’m still flying and I’m not dying and although my eye was swollen
I felt kind of okay there was just a big surge of adrenaline.
The scariest part was not being able to see.
I mean my biggest fear really was a heart attack because I was so excited or would I
be able to actually see a place to land.
You know I was thinking I may just have to land in the desert somewhere.
I had no idea if I would actually be able to see the airport.
The second thing I did and pretty quickly was to say I’m going to go back to the Casa
Grande airport.
I turned back to kind of generally the direction I thought it was.
I was on the Case Grande Unicom frequency and I told everyone in the area to stay clear
in the area because I’m returning to land I suffered a bird strike and everybody get
out of the way because I can’t see very well.
And I changed the frequency to 121 5 and I remember calling Albuquerque center and gave
them a Mayday and they were talking to me but I couldn’t really hear them.
The noise still outside even with the power pulled back was deafening.
I just wanted them to clear the area again if there’s anybody around I couldn’t see
enough to avoid an airplane.
I was fiddling with the GPS to get the Casa Grande identifier and to get the GPS to help
me back and I engaged autopilot t just to keep the airplane level.
About that time the cover on the glare shield came up and completely blocked the windshield
and I couldn’t see out the windshield.
And I was able to take one of my hands and tear out the glare shield and the second it
came loose it got sucked out the front window and left.
I was able to put in the identifier and hit the direct button.
I ended up getting really close to the Garmin 430.
I could see the magenta line that pointed the direction of the airport.
I couldn’t have been more than 5 miles from the airport.
I saw the airport.
It was really easy to see actually with my poor vision because it was a desert area with
no trees and the runway was dark asphalt.
And I remember going, I have one shot at this although I don’t know if that was true.
I certainly didn’t want to go around.
And I cut the power and I did a fairly steep left bank and got the airport on the ground.
I pulled over in front of the FBO building, shut down the airplane and got out and touched
on my hand and shoulder and face and just the eye that was swollen shut.
They took me away to Phoenix which was about a 60 mile drive.
And I remember calling my wife from the ambulance and telling her well I had a little incident.
I’ll call you in a little bit.
I ended up staying at the hospital overnight.
They looked at the eye and said they think it’s going to heal.
You just got blood in your eye and eventually that will go away and clear up and you’ll
be able to see and everything will be fine.
One of the things I’ve learned from this is fly the airplane.
No matter what keep flying the airplane.
I think it’s smart to have a spare set of glasses in the front map pocket so you can
get to them quickly.
5-6 year earlier I saw a Cessna 310 that had a goose go through the front windshield and
I saw the windshield broken and coming down and landing he wasn’t injured at all.
It helped to have seen that.
In my mind I had thought through what if it happens to you.
I think people just hearing the story it puts it in their mind well it will help them because
you think about it and you know you can survive it that you can keep flying the airplane,
that’s good for people to know.