Bear strike!

Sad to hear of this bear strike by a B-737-300 at Yakutat airport on Saturday evening. Crew and passengers were fine; aircraft damaged; sorry to say the bear didn't make it. 

This real-world incident immediately reminded me of a Microsoft Flight Simulator X mission challenge that I attempted, quite a few years ago. It started as a simple short night hop over the hills from Burwash Landing airport, an inland valley airport, to Yakutat airport near the Pacific coast, in the Beechcraft King Air twin-turboprop. The idea was to get across the mountains and land at Yukatat, before a big snowstorm shuts down the airport. The flight rapidly degenerated into a nightmarish scenario, first with loss of airspeed indication, due to an iced-up Pitot tube. Next came a critical (left) engine failure, then a vacuum pump failure, with the associated attitude and directional gyro flight instruments slowly going belly-up. That was followed by a challenging night low-ceiling instrument approach to Yakutat, with the failed engine catching on fire in the procedure turn. After handling all those challenges successfully, I found myself touching down on the snow-covered runway, with limited braking, but thinking, "I did it!" Suddenly a bear comes running across the runway, illuminated by my landing lights at the last moment. I eased in a little rudder to drift left behind the bear on the slippery runway, steered slowly back to the centerline, and came to a stop. After taking a deep breath. I thought, “That would never happen in real life, would it?“ ;-)