A metal Delta bird meets some feathery friends

[Russell D]

Saw this on Yahoo7:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-...window-cracks/

Midair drama as cockpit window cracks

A Delta Air Lines 747 with nearly 380 passengers and crew made an emergency stop at the Midway Atoll wildlife refuge, part of the way between Hawaii and Japan, after the plane developed a crack in the cockpit windshield.

The plane was flying from Honolulu to Osaka on Thursday when pilots noticed the crack and landed at the former military base about 2100km north-west of Oahu at about 5.40pm local time.

Midway is home to about one million Laysan albatross seabirds.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service, which runs the refuge, said on Friday that Delta kept the passengers on board until a second 747 arrived from Japan to fly the passengers to Osaka.
The replacement plane left about 5am on Friday, just before light and before the seabirds began to fly.

Ended up in quite an interesting place. As far as I understand, the Midway Atoll islands are off limits to all civilians as of the early 2000's. And I think only a few researchers visit the islands as part of scientific monitoring of the local bird populations.

According to Wikipedia, Henderson Field (Midway Atoll) used to be a designated emergency diversion facility for ETOPS operations and is subsidised by Boeing. The field hasn't been used very much since WWII by the looks of it, but I assume some US military crew are occasionally dispatched to make sure the runway is in working order in case of emergencies like the one mentioned in the article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henders...idway_Atoll%29

Cheers