Sir Elton John’s private jet was involved in a terrifying incident after being divebombed by a “huge hawk”.
The 78-year-old music icon was on board the Boeing 737 aircraft with his family last month when pilot Duncan Gillespie had to perform an “unorthodox” manoeuvre when the bird of prey dived at the plane.
Gillespie said that he had “dodged a bullet” for the first time in his career just as the plane set off for Paris on Jan 23.
In footage from inside the cockpit, the pilot is heard saying “delay… bird… oh s***”.
As the aircraft takes off, he says “we’d have whacked” as his co-pilot answers: “F****** falcon, that was a big a** bird!”
Gillespie wrote alongside the footage on his Facebook page: “I had to make a judgement 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 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.”
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.”
Meanwhile, Elton revealed last year that he has endured a “challenging” time since losing sight in his right eye in the summer of 2024.
The I’m Still Standing artist told Variety: “It’s been devastating. Because I lost my right eye and my left eye’s not so good, the last 15 months have been challenging for me because I haven’t been able to see anything, watch anything, read anything.
“I’ve had the most incredible life, and there is hope. I’ve just gotta be patient that someday science will help me with this one. Once they help me with this one, I’ll be fine.
“It’s exactly like the Aids situation. You mustn’t give up hope, you must be stoic, you must be strong and always try and batter the door down to try and improve things.”
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