Sir Elton John‘s private jet had a terrifying close call last week when the Rocket Man’s pilot had to make an ‘unorthodox’ manoeuvre.
The pop legend, 78, was on board the Boeing 737 with his family when a ‘huge hawk’ dived at the aircraft as it hurtled down the runway at Farnborough Airport, in Hampshire.
Pilot Duncan Gillespie said he had ‘dodged a bullet’ and for the first time in his career, when the bird of prey was ‘diving at us’ just before the plane took off for Paris on Friday, January 23.
Posted footage from inside the cockpit, Mr Gillespie is heard saying ‘delay… bird… oh s**t’.
As the aircraft takes off he adds ‘we’d have whacked’ before his co-pilot responds: ‘F***ing falcon, that was a big a** bird!’
Alongside the footage on his Facebook page, Mr Gillespie wrote: ‘I had to make a judgment call yesterday, getting airborne out of Farnborough airport and I’m not shy to share it with you.
‘Taking off with a 25 knot crosswind, we were just passing our V1 decision speed, after which I’m obliged to take off, when I saw a huge hawk diving at us – there were two of them, I think he was protecting his mate.
‘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.
‘Now this is the kind of decision only a human could make; there’s no way a machine could ever make such a decision.’
Sir Elton John’s private jet had a terrifying close call this week when the Rocket Man’s pilot had to make an ‘unorthodox’ manoeuvre
The pop legend, 78, was on board the Boeing 737 with his family when a ‘huge hawk’ dived at the aircraft as it hurtled down the runway at Farnborough Airport, in Hampshire (pictured)
He added: ‘We dodged a bullet yesterday, with the original Rocket Man and his family on board and I’m proud of the very unorthodox procedure which we used to avoid a major incident, saving millions of dollars in damages.’
Sir Elton was in 2022 caught in a terrifying mid-air drama as his private jet suffered hydraulic failure en route to New York, then twice failed to make an emergency landing due to high winds.
The singer was travelling from Farnborough Airport for a gig in New York and was at 10,000ft over Ireland when pilots decided they had to return due to a problem with the plane’s hydraulic systems.
The pilot radioed ahead and requested an emergency landing with fire crews racing to the runway to be on hand.
But as Storm Franklin’s 80mph winds buffeted the airfield the plane was twice forced to abort its emergency landing and go around again, only successfully touching down at the third attempt.
Emergency services surrounded the £66million Bombardier Global Express jet as it came to a halt, with sources telling The Sun Sir Elton was ‘shaken’ by the incident.
One source said: ‘The jet was being buffeted and couldn’t land. It was horrible to see.’
