22-07-2025
Seagull smashes cockpit of £73m Spanish fighter jet
The moment a seagull collided with a Spanish fighter jet and smashed through the cockpit was captured in an extraordinary photograph.
The £73m warplane was performing in the Eurofighter display at San Javier Air Base on June 15 when it had a stroke of bad luck. The pilot landed and was unharmed.
Aviation photographer Javier Alonso de Medina Salguero unwittingly captured the spectacle, only realising when he checked his camera later on.
'They reported over the radio that it had hit a seagull and broken the cockpit. Just then, I looked at the photos I had and saw the whole sequence,' he said.
'When I looked at the photos, I was amazed to see the front of the cockpit broken.'
Bird collisions with aircraft are a regular occurrence, with 13,000 reported annually in the US alone. But for a bird to shatter a pilot's glass window, and for a photographer to capture the scene, is exceedingly rare.
