Winfrey and
her boyfriend, Stedman Graham, were not
hurt in the incident, which occurred
around 12:30 p.m. Monday just after the
GulfStream jet had taken off from Santa
Barbara Municipal Airport for an unknown
destination, said Santa Barbara Fire
Department spokesman John Ahlman.
"This is not
a totally unusual thing," Ahlman said of
the cracked windshield. "We see these
things pretty frequently."
Authorities
said they did not know whether Winfrey
boarded another plane to her
destination. The plane will remain
grounded until its windshield can be
repaired, Ahlman said.
Winfrey
bought a mansion on 42 acres of land in
the hills of Montecito five years ago.
The host of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" has
won several Emmys and other awards for
her work on daytime television.
She is
also head of Harpo Productions, founder
of women-oriented cable-TV and Internet
company Oxygen Media Inc., and the
creator of "O" magazine.
Most
aircraft collisions with birds, which
are known as bird strikes and occur
thousands of times a year, do not
severely damage planes. But a KLM Royal
Dutch Airlines jumbo jet had to make an
emergency landing at Los Angeles
International Airport in August 2000
after a seagull was sucked into one of
its engines on takeoff and large pieces
of the engine plummeted onto a beach
just west of the airfield.