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American Airlines passengers feared for their lives Thursday, when a bird flew into the engine of their outbound LaGuardia flight — forcing the plane to quickly make an emergency touchdown at the city’s other airport.
Flight 1722 took off from LGA just after 7:20 p.m. and was scheduled to land at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina less than two hours later — but the plane barely made it past the coast of Long Island before it was diverted and forced to land at JFK International Airport, according to flight radar.
A bird struck an engine of the Airbus A321 causing severe damage that rendered the right propellant entirely useless, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.
The plane — then powered solely by its secondary engine — landed safely without incident at JFK, the Port Authority said.
Surreal video, filmed by a passenger, shows the moment the bird is sucked into the plane’s engine.
The clip posted on X shows the split-second the engine sucks up the poor feathered flyer, which appears to ignite and explode into flames on impact as the plane tilts to the side.
Passengers from the grounded flight told The Post they saw flames and thought the worst as they waited for their bags at a luggage carousel in JFK’s Terminal 8.
“I thought I was gonna die,” Amy Stamper, of Tennessee, said.
“I was scared. I thought I was gonna die. There were a couple of small explosions. And there was a fire,” Stamper said in disbelief.
Another passenger, who asked to remain anonymous, expressed similarly dire feelings.
“I was right by the wing and I saw it. I saw two flames in the sky… I thought I was gonna die. I prayed. I thought I was gonna die for about 30 seconds,” the man said.
Eric Halili, 43, was also left shaken by the flight gone wrong.
“I think that was a very traumatic experience and what made it worse was that we had to wait over an hour to get our bags,” Halili griped.
“You just wanted the day to end and it just didn’t end.”
Halili, who was visiting New York for work, said he “absolutely” feared for his life.
The father of two told The Post that his kids and wife were all he thought about in the moments when he believed Flight 1722 could go down.
“That was the first thing that came into my mind — not being able to come home to them,” Halili said somberly.
Halili, who was holding a bag of goodies from Junior’s Cheesecake, said he was disappointed he won’t be able to bring the treats to his wife Thursday night.
Misleidy, 26, was on her way back home to Florida via Charlotte after spending her honeymoon in New York with her freshly minted husband and ended up on the rerouted plane by a stroke of fate.
“I actually missed my first plane. This is the second one,” she told The Post. “It’s what God had in store.”
“There were people who were scared. I was a little scared… It kind of felt like how a car would backfire. Rocking a little,” Misleidy said. “At first I didn’t think much of it. But then I saw other people [reacting] around me and thought, ‘This might be bad’.”
The grateful passenger, who only provided her first name, said the American Airlines flight attendants did a good job calming down the distressed flyers.
No injuries were reported as a result of the incident, American Airlines said in a statement.
The Charlotte-bound flight is scheduled to re-depart on Friday morning and customers were provided hotel accommodations for the night, according to the airline.
The Federal Aviation Administration did not respond to The Post’s request for comment by the time of publication.
