View Full Version : Virgin Australia birdstrike
CAEBr
17th Jun 2024, 08:20
Virgin Australia flight from NZ to Oz apparently suffered a birdstrike and engine surge on take off with a subsequent diversion.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-virgin-plane-fire-horror-33007027
As a 737 it'll no doubt be subject to the usual in depth assessment, but a "harrowing" video (ffs) is already being linked showing the surging engine lighting up the night sky. Report of injuries to one passenger and one crew but no further details.
Capn Bloggs
17th Jun 2024, 08:43
RNP EODP out of Queenstown? Juicy!
AerocatS2A
17th Jun 2024, 21:35
Report of injuries to one passenger and one crew but no further details.
Really? That seems unlikely. I wonder if they've mixed it up with an Air NZ A320 that had a turbulence encounter inbound to Queenstown on Sunday. THAT one injured one crew and one passenger (coffee burn).
OldLurker
18th Jun 2024, 13:07
This incident gets an article in "The Conversation", reproduced in The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/18/virgin-australia-engine-fire-bird-strike-emergency-landing).
The first bird strike (https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/icwdm_usdanwrc/1459/) was recorded by Orville Wright in 1905, over a cornfield in Ohio.
Must have been a slow news day.
OldnGrounded
19th Jun 2024, 01:59
Must have been a slow news day.
We can be pretty sure that it was a fairly slow birdstrike.
Skylark58
19th Jun 2024, 08:44
From the Guardian article:
Engine manufacturers test the safety of these engines by firing a high-speed frozen chicken (https://www.aerospacetestinginternational.com/news/engine-testing/faa-proposes-new-engine-test-for-bird-ingestion.html) at them while the engine is operating at full thrust.
Doug Drury is a professor and head of aviation at CQUniversity Australia
aeromech3
20th Jun 2024, 04:13
Hope everyone got the joke and re edit "a high-speed frozen chicken".
Maybe Skylark58, being my age, remembers the story of a test cell engine having a non defrosted bird used and resultant serious damage.
The subject of birds in aerodrome areas is taken seriously, even down to the length of the grass around runways to make it less suitable for larger bird types and not too short such that rodents could be spotted by larger birds of prey.
In my day we would send any bird material found in our engines to a specialist centre for identification, they could then advise the CAA on best suitable methods to deter same from our base aerodrome.