Bird puts huge dent into nose of Boeing 737 airplane

The photos of a Boeing 737-800 with a crushed in nose is shocking, particularly because such intimidating damage was caused by nothing but a bird.

The Turkish Airlines flight TK2004 was struck by the bird while landing in Nevşehir, Turkey from Istanbul.

Thankfully, the pilot was able to land the 70 ton domestic flight successfully and none of the 125 passengers were injured.

A spokesperson for Turkish Airlines explained to Mashable, that despite what looks like alarming impairment, the damage isn't actually shocking because the nose cone of a plane is very soft.

Dr. Ali Genc, Turkish Airlines senior vice president of media relations stated in an e-mail that the nose, "of a plane is being constructed by soft materials (composit) to minimalize the impact of such hits. Therefore, such standard/normal deformation occurs as a natural result of such incidents."

Though this incident wasn't particularly dangerous, airliner-bird collisions can be quite perilous.

As Dr. Genc comments, "The critical bird hits in aviation [are] the ones that occur on the engine area," but "any other area of the aircraft than the engine area, such as [the nose cone], wings, hull and etc. are not [at] risk by bird hit."