Bird strike forces Turkish Airbus into costly landing

A Turkish Airline plane on the runway. PHOTO/NMG

What you need to know:

Many residents in Kampala and the surrounding districts of Wakiso and Mukono took to social media to report the unusual occurrence of a passenger plane circling the skies.

A bird strike forced a Turkish Airlines flight departing Entebbe International Airport for Istanbul to turn around and make an emergency landing Tuesday morning.

For nearly one-and-a-half hours, the Airbus 330 flight 606, with 281 passengers and crew on board, had to circle in the skies of Kampala and the surrounding districts before finally touching back down at Entebbe airport at 8.52am.

It later departed at 10:49am to complete the aborted flight.

The Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA), the regulator of the aviation industry in the country, said the plane needed to hover in the skies as a “precautionary measure.”

“On Tuesday, January 10, 2023, a Turkish Airlines flight number 606 departed Entebbe at 7.30am for Istanbul while it was raining. Unfortunately, the aircraft experienced a bird strike during take-off,” UCAA said in a statement, adding, “As a precautionary measure, the flight hovered in the Ugandan airspace before landing safely at Entebbe at 8:52am.”

Many residents in Kampala and the surrounding districts of Wakiso and Mukono took to social media to report the unusual occurrence of a passenger plane circling the skies. Some thought it had failed to land.

However, aviation journalist and expert, Mr Michael Wakabi, reading from FR24, noted that the plane was flying in a holding pattern to reduce weight and turn back to base.

FR24, or Flightradar24, is a Swedish internet-based service that shows real-time aircraft flight tracking information on a map.

Mr Wakabi noted that the A330 has no fuel dumping capability, necessitating hovering in airspace to burn fuel.

Fuel dumping is used by flight crews when it is necessary to land quickly but the aircraft weight exceeds the prescribed maximum to do so.

If the aircraft tried to land without dumping the fuel first, it is considered an overweight landing attempt and could place immense stress on the airframe, online information shows.

Most large planes are designed with fuel jettison systems. But the A330-200F—such as the Turkish Airlines plane—does not have a centre tank available and does not have a fuel jettison system installed.

But for a plane to hover over the base for one and a half hour, why wouldn’t it just have flown to its destination or next airport instead?

“A flight to Turkey is over five hours. You can’t take that risk,” said Mr Vianney Luggya, the UCCA spokesperson, stressing that precaution is paramount.

After its emergency landing, Mr Luggya said the plane was checked for airworthiness before resuming the flight at 10:49am—this time without an encounter with the barn swallows that had forced the ‘bigger bird’ back to the ground. It arrived in Istanbul at 4.40pm.

The airline did not release a communication and their social media handler on Twitter asked for time to check.

“The birds are small and move in groups,” said Sheila Ajok, the deputy UCAA spokesperson.

“They were in the airspace.”

Situated on the northern shores of Lake Victoria, Entebbe airport’s northern swathes are covered by Namiiro and Kanyamusaga swamps, which are habitats to various bird species.

Entebbe Peninsula is a gazetted bird sanctuary and host to some of the common bird species such as African fish eagles, black kites, marabou storks, black headed herons, swallows, gulls, and egrets.

“The situation is compounded by the presence of a veterinary facility adjacent to the runway on the southern end, which also attracts birds,” said Mr Wakabi.

The UCAA said yesterday that it has a Bird Hazard Control Unit charged with scaring away birds from the runway before a landing or take-off.

“The bird unit has over the years done everything possible to minimise bird strike incidents. The fact that Entebbe is a bird sanctuary enhances the enormity of the challenge,” it said.

But Ms Ajok said the unit had not failed in its duties yesterday because the bird attack happened in the airspace.

“Birds strikes have been happening with varying degrees of severity but none has been catastrophic,” Mr Wakabi added.

In one of the most famous incidents, an Airbus A320 on route to Charlotte from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport flew into a flock of birds shortly after the plane had taken off on January 15, 2009.

The pilots glided and made an emergency landing on the Hudson River with all 155 on board later rescued by boats.

In October 2010, a KLM Airbus A330-200 departing Entebbe for Amsterdam, Netherlands, ingested a bird into the right hand engine after the main wheels had left the runway and returned to Entebbe for a safe landing a few minutes later.

In this incident, it was the grey crowned crane (Crested Crane). This is a 3.5kg bird that damaged the CF6 engine, leading to flight cancellation.

Cost

Air transport is greatly threatened by the presence of birds at any airport.

Information available online shows that an airline can lose up to $10m in replacement of a single aircraft engine after destruction by birds.

In worse cases, there could be total loss of an aircraft, its passengers and or cargo.