Patna: As many as 185 passengers and crew of a Delhi-bound SpiceJet flight had miraculous escape when one of the engines suffered damages due to a suspected bird hit after taking off from Patna’s Jayaprakash Narayan International (JPNI) Airport on Sunday.
Passengers said that fire broke out in one of the engines with a blast minutes after the SG725 flight took off from Patna airport. They immediately informed the crew about smoke bellowing out of an engine. The pilots managed to make emergency landing of the aircraft safely.
It was bird hit: DGCA
Later, in a statement issued by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said that the mishap took place due to a bird it. “Three blades of the engine were seriously damaged, apparently due to the collision with birds hovering in the sky near the airport. However, exact cause of the damage would be known after a detailed investigation,” said an officer of the Patna station of Airport Authority of India (AAI).
All the passengers of the ill-fated aircraft were taken to Delhi by another flight of the SpiceJet in the afternoon amidst chaos and confusion at the airport. Security had to be reinforced after the passengers and their relatives, who rushed to the airport after being informed about the accident, indulged in creating commotion there.
Bird it at Patna not new
Officials said that it was not a rare incident of bird hit at Patna airport that made the flight return and land with damages. On August last year, an Indigo flight (6E732) collided with a flying object mid-air after it began to descend for landing. The flight was coming from New Delhi.
Similarly, in January last year, A 320 aircraft of Vistara, which was coming to Patna from Bangalore had to make an emergency landing after it suffered the bird hit. On March 6, 2019, an airbus 320 of GoAir, bound for Delhi, had to make an emergency landing at the JPNI airport had to make a detour and return to Patna airport after it suspected to have been hit a bird.
AAI officials said the more than 10 incidents of bird hit were reported in the last three years. However, no major accident took place. The airport officials still rely on manual system to scare away birds by blasting cracking before landing and during the take-off of the aircrafts. They said that flying of birds remains a major issue at Patna airport, which is considered one of the dangerous airports for landing.
Patna airport remains unsafe
The airport officials regular flying of birds around the airport had been a major issue for them during the flight operations and said they had been raising it with the district authorities during the routine meetings. “Presence of trees in the nearby Patna zoo, which falls in the funnel zone of the airport, and operation of meat shops on the western end of the runaway are the sources of major concern for us,” said an AAI officer.
