Bird strike, Ryanair flight 2131 13 October 2021
My local paper ran an item about Ryanair flight FR2131, Manchester to Lanzarote on 13 October 2021 which diverted to Liverpool because of a bird strike. (Usual alarming stuff about being low when it seemed a perfectly normal glide slope)
FR24 shows the flight climbing to a maximum of 3625 feet then turning north to a holding pattern north of Warrington for about 30 minutes before leaving the hold to land at Liverpool JLA
What seems odd about this flight is that the same flight the day before, as indeed other flights taking the same routing, have climbed to ~ 10000 feet by the same point to the East of Chester where the flight on 13 Oct. flight stopped climbing and remained at 3625 feet until it started its descent 40 minutes later.
I'm interested to get some professional comment on this. If it was a bird strike why was it only at 3625 feet and not 6000 feet higher at the point it stopped climbing Put it another way normal flights are at 3625 feet just over the M6 at Knutsford a couple of miles W of MIA. Why did this one continue SW when presumably turning right immediately for an emergency landing (with a hold) at LPL would have been the obvious course.
Clearly the engines weren't damaged such that it couldn't continue flying for the best part of an hour. Was it perhaps something software related and the crew were trying to fix it whilst continuing on the planned flight but eventually decided to turn back South of Chester. But then why not go straight into LPL?
Why would it have spent 30 minutes in a hold. Might that have been to dump fuel and if so why only 30 minutes of fuel when it was loaded for a ~ 4 hour flight?
Local paper report