Swine flew – Bird strikes topped off by pig strikes

The recent rains have created a sudden bird problem at Ahmedabad (IATA: AMD) airport who come to feed on the insects.

On Friday July 16th, a GoAir Airbus A320-214, performing flight G8-321 from Ahmedabad, Gujarat to New Delhi, India with 102 passengers and 6 crew, was taxing for take-off when a black kite (Milvus migrans) was ingested into the right hand engine. The airplane taxied back to the terminal. It is reported that six fan blades were damaged by the bird strike which forced cancellation of the flight. The passengers were rebooked onto Spicejet’s flight SG-106 departing about one hour later.

Editors note : Still awaiting a response from GoAir on the aircraft registration. The A320-214 is the most common series of A320 in the GoAir fleet.

Admittedly India has a diverse animal population, but I am chuckling while writing this story thinking of the phrase “when pigs fly”.

On Saturday July 17th, a Kingfisher Airlines Aerospatiale ATR72-500 registration VT-KAC MSN0729 performing flight IT2802 from Indore, Madhya Pradesh, to Nagpur, Maharashtra with 56 passengers and 4 crew, had just touched down around 20:43 (15:13Z) at Nagpur’s runway, when three wild pigs suddenly darted across the runway. At least one of the pigs made contact with the aircraft. The airplane stopped safely, an immediate inspection revealed no obvious damage, so the airplane taxied to the apron, where the passengers disembarked normally.

The plane had to be grounded, as per normal safety protocol. A relief aircraft along with an engineering crew arrived from Hyderabad to take the passengers to Hyderabad. The aircraft is back in service.

This incident is reminiscent of an incident on March 28, 2008 at Bangalore when a Kingfisher Airlines ATR72-500 hit a dog on the runway.

In this case may be Kingfisher tried to avoid it but the “swine flew”.