NEW DELHI: A full emergency was declared at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on Saturday after a Dubai-bound FedEx aircraft suffered a bird hit. A full emergency landing was declared at 10.46 am after a flight no FX5279 was hit by a bird soon after its take off.
The flight landed safely and took off again at 1.44 pm. The cargo flight was involved in an air turnback due to a suspected bird hit at 1000 ft today, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said in a statement. “Delhi airport (DIAL) declared an emergency.
Aircraft landed back safely. After inspection, it has been released for flight,” DGCA said in its statement. While bird-hit incidents are not uncommon, several passenger flights from Delhi Airport were diverted in the last few days owing to bad weather.
On Thursday, nearly 22 flights were diverted from Delhi Airport due to weather conditions. Last month, a bird strike incident forced an Air Asia flight, en route to Pune, to make an emergency landing at the Biju Patnaik International Airport in Bhubaneswar.
The plane suffered a bird hit soon after taking off from the airport. On October 15 last year, an Akasa Air plane flying from Ahmedabad to Delhi hit a bird, which caused sustained radome damage. Earlier the same day, a bird struck a Mumbai- Bengaluru Akasa Air flight.
Animal and bird strikes have become a common phenomenon at Indian airports, but the number of incidents has increased significantly, due to increased air traffic, inadequate infrastructure and poor waste management in several cities.