Summary
- Bird strikes occur more often than expected but often don’t have serious consequences for flights.
- On this incident, an Airbus A320-200 experienced a double bird strike shortly after takeoff from Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.
- The aircraft was capable of safely land despite engine damage and re-entered industrial service after two days.
On 26 January 2024, an Airbus A320-200 suffered a double bird strike that damaged each engines shortly after departing from Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport (IWA). While the aircraft’s engines were impaired by the incident, the jet was capable of touch back down safely shortly after taking off.
No injuries were reported from the incident, and the aircraft was capable of re-enter industrial service after sitting on the bottom for just shy of two days. The aircraft was operating as Allegiant Flight 693 on the time, an everyday nonstop service between Phoenix and Des Moines International Airport (DSM) in Iowa.
Incident specifics
Because the incident is officially classified as minor, it’s unsurprising that there are few specific details available as to why specifically the aircraft encountered the birds, which ultimately damaged its engines. The Federal Aviation Administration’s Aviation Safety Information Evaluation and Sharing (ASIAS) platform included relatively few details, stating that the jet reported multiple bird strikes on rotation.
Photo: Markus Mainka | Shutterstock
The report would go on to point that the plane returned back to Phoenix and landed safely without incident. Moreover, a post-landing inspection was conducted and revealed that the bird strikes had done damage to each engines, which required immediate attention from the airline’s maintenance team.
Based on an evaluation of the incident from The Aviation Herald, the aircraft had departed from Mesa Airport’s runway 30C prior to encountering the birds. The particular strikes occurred once the jet had reached a height of 6,000 feet, after which the plane quickly descended and landed normally on the ability’s runway 30L.
Photo: Artistic Operations | Shutterstock
Flight tracking details are also able to verify this, with the web site Flight Aware also indicating that the aircraft reached an altitude of 6,000 feet before returning to IWA just 26 minutes after departure. In total, the aircraft only flew 47 miles and reached a maximum speed of slightly below 300 miles per hour.
Bird strikes
While one might expect bird strikes to be a rare event with serious flight safety implications, they really occur much more often than one might expect. Actually, the overwhelming majority of bird strike incidents lead to no serious consequences for passengers.
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Nonetheless, bird strikes during certain moments, akin to takeoff or landing, can seriously damage engines, alongside other parts of an aircraft, akin to the windscreen and nose cone. Almost all the time, aircraft are capable of safely make an emergency landing, and maintenance teams will have the option to deal with the damage inside quite a lot of days.
With the intention to be sure that bird strikes don’t result in potentially catastrophic incidents, manufacturers and regulators perform quite a lot of tests on recent engines in an effort to be sure that they will safely withstand a foreign object being ingested. More often than not, aircraft engines can still safely operate when encountering objects way larger than a typical bird.
Multiple non-lethal bird strike incidents have occurred this 12 months to date. Just two days ago, a Lufthansa Airbus A340 was forced to return to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), and a Southwest 737 MAX 8 encountered an identical situation and was forced to land again at Latest Orleans International Airport (MSY).