Lufthansa A320 at Dusseldorf on Jul 16th 2014, rejected takeoff

A Lufthansa Airbus A320-200, registration D-AIQT performing flight LH-2990 from Dusseldorf (Germany) to Moscow Vnukovo (Russia) with 146 passengers, was accelerating for takeoff from Dusseldorf's runway 23R when the aircraft went through a flock of birds and received a number of bird impacts. The crew decided to reject takeoff at high speed, the aircraft slowed safely and came to a stop about half way down the runway in front of the fire house. Emergency services responded and cooled the brakes, the aircraft was subsequently towed to the apron.

The occurrence aircraft was able to depart to Moscow about 6 hours later and reached Moscow with a delay of 5:45 hours.

The airline reported the aircraft was just about to reach V1 when the crew rejected takeoff. Emergency services needed to cool the brakes, the aircraft subsequently underwent a thorough examination before returning to service. Had birds been ingested into the engines, the pilots would be able to hear the bird entering the engine and would see reactions on the engine monitoring instruments.