AviTech Reader

My euphoria about the engine that could not succumb to bird strikes never stayed that long…really. I had thought we just found an answer to seal away all these gruesome conditions where a bird imagines to be flying into an advanced nest only to end up in double tragedy-deaths and a damaged engine! Anyway, this happened before someone could implement this in a real aircraft.

This happened on 28th September 2012. The Dornier Do-228 owned by Sita Air climbed up the runway from Kathmandu, Nepal headed to Lukla-still in Nepal. It had 3 crew members and 16 tourists on board and was right in the beginning of that first climb up the runway when a bird  accidentally flew into the engine and damaged it. As usual, the first course of action is to return to the airport and land but, in this specific case, this did not work as the aircraft descended at a very fast rate and could not make it to the airport. The only other option was to land at the bank of Manohara River, Koteshwor village. However, this again, did not end well as the plane crashed on that river bank and went up in flames completely consuming everybody and everything…so doleful an end.

According to investigations, a bird hit the right hand engine at about 15m above the ground and caused a part of the engine to separate from the engine and disfigure the rudder. This rendred any turn uncordinated hence the move back to the runway uncontrollable as the pilot could no longer maintain ascendancy over the plane for longer.

To view some more information, you can check here. Some of the pictures are displayed here.