Another Bonanza crashes trying to return to the airport.
So, I’m at the local sports bar and hear a guy mentioned that he works for the FAA. This is not unusual, as there is an FAA facility nearby. I butted in and asked him if he job (some sort of engineer) was safe and he replied “For now”. I then said something along the lines of, “At least, they are not laying off controllers”. He agreed but added that the controllers are just one part of a complicated system. There are people monitoring essential computer systems around the clock. The systems are old and require near constant attention. He said that some of these people are being laid off and the workload for those who remain will increase dramatically. He felt that it would just be a matter of time before a disaster of some sort occurs as a result of understaffing.
He also noted that Musk wants the entire system to be run over Starlink, as opposed the hardwire based system that is currently being upgraded by Verizon et al. Aside from the clear conflict of interest, this guy noted that a satellite-based system would be inherently less reliable than a hardwire system. I don’t know whether or not this is true but it doesn’t seem to me that flying is about to get safer.
Sure, Alaska Air looks smart now, but how dumb will they look the next time a hungry bear gets on a loaded 737 and not an ounce of bear spray available? That’s gonna be one grisly mess to clean up.
I thought there were a lot of smart posters on this thread, but no one thought of this potential disaster. It’s a good thing I’m here.
Is it too soon for the obligatory
I’m so tired of the MF-ing bears on this MF-ing plane!
Grizzly, too. 
Nah. Just take a runway with a high speed turnoff on the Captain’s side; once they get there & the copilot states, “Bear left” they’re good
The advantage of flying in Alaska is the use of the Bearing Straits as navigation reference.
Right, frog.
One of my former co-workers who’s still working sent me a vid last month he took from the cockpit. They’re taxiing on a snow-covered taxiway in Canada, snow is blowing around, and there’s a wolf up ahead loping along while they’re stuck behind him. Wolf does not seem concerned in the least about this big jet in hot pursuit.
I’m so tired of these MF-ing wolves in front of my MF-ing plane.
I used to check the CADORS regularly but fell out of the habit. Over the years, reports of bears, wolves, foxes, a gazillion deer, birds (turkeys!), and even fish strike have been made. The fish is presumed to have been dropped by a bird flying over the plane.
In my old job I also saw repair requests, and enjoyed randomly searching the database for interesting ones. Bird strikes, birds nesting in poorly covered engines and ram inlets, a bee hive in an uncovered engine (poor long term storage), a turtle strike (gear drove over it; report didn’t say if the turtle survived). I had one customer tell me about a difficult week they had with a plane that had a nasty odour…after completing the couple of flights on the schedule they put the plane into maintenance and found a dead racoon in the main gear bay.
Years ago I worked for a company that had a DC-8 hit a deer. When it landed at destination there were 2 legs sticking out of the nose gear. The mechanic had stomach gravitation issues.
I’ve told the story before, probably even upthread, but I once had a rabbit strike inflight.
Reminds me of the salmon strike tale our pilot told flying up to land on a glacier on Denali.
There is a recording floating around of the pilot reporting the salmon strike.
Apparently a bald eagle dropped his lunch in the path of a plane taking off or landing in Alaska…likely a couple of “repeat please” requests.
Personally I actually ducked my head when these baseball sized black things came at me at cloud base near Toronto Pearson.
I was on a cloud street in a 17M Lark sailplane when I got an adrenaline rush seeing these “things” coming at me at 100 knots.
Turned out it was hundreds of Monarch Butterflies gaining height in the very nice cloudstreet to be able to get across Lake Ontario. 
My father had a burro strike when flying SAR in Arizona back in the day. Sumbitch just walked out onto the runway. Put a sizeable hole in the starboard wing.
Now that I’m back on my PC, not my phone …
See
Did that require an engine rebuild?
or a change of clothes.
Neither. It was fine.
OTOH …
Took 2 Canada geese on the nose of a 717 at ~8000MSL doing 250 one night. Never saw 'em coming, just a tremendous BANG!!! Punched a ~8x18" hole in the aluminum below the windshields above the radome. Quite the mess.
Had they hit a foot higher they’d have center-punched my windshield & probably busted through. Decent bet I’d have been crippled or killed.
We declared emergency, returned to base, got a spare jet, & pressed on to the destination 3+ hours away. Airplane was down for several days.
Wasted a bunch of perfectly good adrenaline that night. No dirty drawers up front. But they heard the sound of the impact 20 rows back in the cabin.
We had to respond to a flock of turkeys that had been struck by a Saab 340. Must have taken out a dozen of them. Blood and turkey parts everywhere - the plane was a mess. Some damage to the lights as I recall, but that was it. The props just chewed through them like they weren’t there.
Between airport operations, airfield maintenance, and us, we ended up picking up each feather by hand. There was a goopy, sticky lump at the bird end of each feather that stuck it to the runway. We tried to wash them off with the arff vehicle turrets but it just made all the feathers face the same direction.
Oh, the memories. I should have written a book.
Yeah. A book. I’d buy yours; you’d probably buy mine.