A bird incident has temporarily closed an airport runway

The ultimate bird strike, or a collision between an airplane and an airborne animal such as a bird or bat, was depicted in the 2009 film “Sully,” about the plane captain who successfully landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the river Hudson after the plane. struck a flock of geese and lost engine power shortly after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

Although they rarely cause such extreme situations, aircraft bird strikes occur on average 60 times a day or about 21,000 times a year worldwide.

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On October 7, a Ryanair (RYAOF) The flight from Bologna in Italy to Manchester in the United Kingdom hit what local agency Aviation Herald describes as a “number of geese” just before landing on runway 23R at Manchester Airport (MAN).

That’s what happened when a Ryanair flight hit a flock of geese

Although the plane had already landed safely, the runway was still immediately closed for a safety inspection and time to clean up the birds killed by the impact.

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“The aircraft departed without further incident and taxied to the apron,” the report describes. “The runway had to be closed for about 30 minutes for cleaning.”

That said, the impact still caused significant disruption to the airport’s flight schedule, as more than a dozen flights scheduled to take off or land at the airport were instructed to wait.

Several of the flights already in the air were diverted to nearby Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LPL) or Birmingham Airport (BHX). Airlines that had delayed flights included not only Ryanair but also British Airways, easyJet (EJTTF) Jet2 and Lufthansa (DLAKF) the budget subsidiary of Eurowings — the carriers that are commonly used for short-haul flights between the UK and European capitals.

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These are some of the other bird strikes that have happened recently

The runway eventually reopened at 20:20 local time and the airport began working to restart flights. Some of the longest delays lasted 12 hours into the next morning.

In the US, a recent bird strike incident occurred in late April when an American Airlines (AAL) flight from Washington, DC to Key West in Florida had to be diverted to Baltimore after the plane “struck a bird on takeoff”. The plane had to climb high enough to make a safe landing in the nearest state.

Two months earlier, in March, another American Airlines plane was coming into the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) in Miami was damaged to the point where it had to be towed off the runway and taken out of service for repairs after hitting a bird on descent.

No passengers on board that plane were injured, but the runway also had to be closed for cleaning and examination. It remained closed from the time the incident occurred at around 12:50 local time until flights took off early the next morning. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimates that between 11% and 15% of all bird strikes cause damage to the aircraft, while less than 1% result in injury to those on board.