Airbreathing jet engine In another incident in 1995, a Dassault Falcon 20 crashed at a Paris airport during an emergency landing attempt after ingesting lapwings into an engine, which caused an engine failure and a fire in the airplane fuselage; all 10 people on board were killed. In 2009, an Airbus A320 aircraft, US Airways Flight 1549, ingested one bird into each engine. The plane ditched in the Hudson River after taking off from LaGuardia International Airport in New York City. There were no fatalities. Jet engines have to be designed to withstand the ingestion of birds of a specified weight and number
US Airways won a three-way competition between Phoenix and Charlotte in 2007 for the right to continue as US Airways' Global Flight Operations center. Opening in November 2008, US Airways invested more than $25 million ($ million today) into a facility. It replaced a smaller 11-year-old (pre-merger) operations center closer to downtown Pittsburgh. The state-of-the-art Ops Center opened ahead of schedule and was home to approximately 600 employees. It served as the nerve center for all of US Airways' nearly 1,400 daily mainline flights. As part of its merger with American Airlines, the airline intended to close the flight operations center and