Bird hits Spicejet flight in Gujarat, damages nose

Just a week after the airport authorities' claimed to have reduced the number of bird hit incidents, a Spicejet flight was hit by a bird on Wednesday morning. The accident was so fierce that the nose of the aircraft -Radome got damaged and this left 68 passengers high and dry.

According to the sources at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport (SVPI), the Pune-Ahmedabad-Jaipur flight was hit by a bird (kite) at 9:35 am while the flight was making a landing. The bird hit is said to have completely damaged the nose of the aircraft, said a source, adding that the strike made a dent of about 1 foot in the aircraft's body. A radar (weather radar) housed inside the dome-shaped Radome was also damaged by the impact of the hit.

The flight, carrying 68 passengers, couldn't take off after the incident. Sources said 30 of them were sent to Jaipur via Delhi while the rest traveled via Mumbai airport to their destination. Sources said the accident was one of the biggest of its kind in recent times.

Recently, during the meeting of Airfield Environment Management Committee (AEMC), airport officials claimed that there is a decline of 26% in bird hits in the last eight months as compared to the same time period in the previous year.

Officials also claimed that a total of 14 cases of bird hits were reported in August 2011, which is 26% less than the previous year's number of 19 cases (reported from January to August 2010).