Blow to the Nose

Um, what caused this?

Federal and airline officials are still trying to figure out what crumpled the nose cone of a Northwest Airlines Boeing 757 that landed safely Sunday in Tampa, Fla.

One early theory has been ruled out: that the plane struck a bird.

"At 18,000 feet, a bird would have to be wearing an oxygen mask," said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory in Chicago. Other possible causes include metal fatigue or a design failure, she said.

Check out the picture in the article. I can't imagine that 'metal fatigue or a design failure' could possibly cause something that's clearly some kind of impact. The reasoning in the article is that 18,000 feet is too high for a large bird to fly. A little Google fu suggests that that's false:

When migrating, however, birds often do climb to relatively great heights, possibly to avoid dehydration in the warmer air near the ground. Migrating birds in the Caribbean are mostly observed around 10,000 feet, although some are found half and some twice that high. Generally long-distance migrants seem to start out at about 5,000 feet and then progressively climb to around 20,000 feet. Just like jet aircraft, the optimum cruise altitude of migrants increases as their "fuel" is used up and their weight declines. Vultures sometimes rise over 10,000 feet in order to scan larger areas for food (and to watch the behavior of distant vultures for clues to the location of a feast). Perhaps the most impressive altitude record is that of a flock of Whooper Swans which was seen on radar arriving over Northern Ireland on migration and was visually identified by an airline pilot at 29,000 feet. Birds can fly at altitudes that would be impossible for bats, since bird lungs can extract a larger fraction of oxygen from the air than can mammal lungs.

C'mon news people, check these things out!