A bird caused significant damage to the wing of a Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner as it was landing at London Heathrow Airport on Sunday, although the bird came out a lot worse from the encounter than the plane.
The bird strike occurred as the Saudia Airlines flight from Jeddah was on approach to Heathrow Airport following an otherwise uneventful six hour flight.
Despite the damage, however, neither the pilots nor the passengers were aware of what had happened until after the plane had landed and engineers started to conduct a routine post-flight inspection.
The engineers found a large hole in the bloodied leading edge slat of the left wing, as well as remains of the bird in the wing.
The aircraft was only delivered to Saudia around six months ago, fresh from the Boeing factory, and the plane has remained on the ground ever since as arrangements are made to repair the wing.
Saudia had hoped to use the aircraft to operate its once-weekly flight to Neom Bay Airport in the North West of Saudia Arabia. Neom is the Kingdom’s multi-billion-dollar project to create a world-class tourism destination, although there are currently few passengers flying to the region.
