Plane forced to return to Calgary airport after mechanical problems

A Boeing 737 returned to the Calgary airport Wednesday evening after birds struck one of its engines but there were no injuries among 129 passengers and five crew members, the airline says.

The Canadian North plane left the airport at 5:43 p.m. on its way to a community near the oilsands when two large birds struck the engine on the left side of the place, spokeman Kelly Lewis said.

"Bird strikes are not something that happen frequently but they are a common enough occurrence that we train for that on a regular basis," he said.

Lewis says the pilots have confirmed that at no point was the engine on fire.

"The birds were large and there was more than one of them, there would have been quite a bit of debris circulating through the engine," Lewis said.

"At no point was the engine on fire."

He says pilots are trained for this exact scenario and "handled the procedure exactly as they should have."