A suspected bird strike disabled a commercial airliner as it landed early Thursday at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and passengers and crew were delayed getting off the aircraft for nearly two hours.

American Airlines Flight 458 from Miami touched down safely at 12:48 a.m., and the cockpit crew reported to air traffic control that the plane had been struck by a bird, said airport spokesman Jeff Lea.

As a result of the impact to the airliner's front landing gear, "the plane became inoperable to taxi off the runway," Lea said. "It eventually had to be towed to the gate. The runway was closed for a couple of hours to clean up hydraulic fluids that were a result of the bird strike."

American Airlines spokesman Tim Wetzel said that ground crew personnel "needed to replace a part [on the plane] in order to tow it to the gate."

Once the Boeing 737-800 reached the gate about one hour and 50 minutes later, at 2:39 a.m., the 160 passengers and six crew members went through the normal deplaning process, Wetzel said.

"Obviously, this was not the best situation," he said.

A statement from American Airlines read that "we never want to disrupt our customers' travel plans, and we apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused."

From May 1990 to December 2023, there have been more than 2,200 bird strikes at the Twin Cities airport, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

The amount of time that passengers and crew were forced to remain on board was within the three-hour limit that domestic passengers can be detained on grounded U.S. airliners. Anything longer than three hours leads to hefty fines.

The U.S. Department of Transportation also requires that carriers must provide adequate food and drinking water for passengers within two hours of a delay on the tarmac and maintain operable bathrooms.