A TUI Airways Boeing 737MAX with as many as 189 passengers onboard was forced to make an emergency landing on Thursday after two swans smashed into the nose and cockpit windscreen as the plane took off from London Gatwick Airport.
The two-year-old aircraft departed Gatwick at 9:20 am on February 6, bound for the popular winter sun destination of Cabo Verde off the coast of West Africa, but the pilots quickly stopped the climb when the two swans impacted the front of the plane.
At just 1,000 feet, the pilots made a mayday distress call and then entered a holding pattern over West Sussex before making a priority return to London Gatwick where the plane was met by emergency services.
Once safely on the ground, the true extent of the damage to the plane was easily visible, causing puncture holes clearly visible on the nose radome and pressure bulkhead, along with blood splattered across the cracked cockpit windscreen.
The mess on the windscreen was so severe that the aircraft needed a ground escort to get back to the gate where passengers disembarked, and the aircraft was grounded so that it could go in for repairs.
Although relatively rare, bird strikes are not unheard of and can be known to cause severe damage to passenger jets.
Last October, the Captain of a Boeing 737MAX operated by Canadian low-cost carrier Flair Airlines was injured when a flock of geese smashed into the windscreen of the plane as it departed Toronto Pearson Airport.
One of the geese ‘penetrated’ the cockpit windscreen, causing minor injuries to the Captain as glass flew into the flight deck. The pilots were able to safely divert the aircraft back to Toronto where it landed safely.
The cockpit windscreen of a Boeing 737MAX is made of three separate layers for maximum durability. There is an outer and inner glass layer and then a vinyl interlayer, which is meant to hold the glass together should either of the other two layers shatter.
Although a probe is still very much underway, accident investigators in South Korea are trying to work out whether a bird strike to the engine of a Jeju Air Boeing 737 could have been, at least partially responsible, for the aircraft crashing at Maun International Airport, resulting in the tragic loss of 179 people onboard.
Investigators suspect that the bird strike disabled both engines, cutting off power to the 15-year-old plane.
