BOH Bees
Don’t shoot me down gentlemen, this is my first post and I am a mere SLF. I believe what happened was more along these lines.
The aircraft encountered the bees shortly after take off whilst climbing to FL70. The flight deck window went darker (with what I am going to describe as ‘bee juice’ – not a technical term). There was a momentary change in engine note. Coincidently, the aircraft levelled off at FL70 as previously instructed by ATC.
When cleared to climb again and the power was increased, the engine began to surge. The captain elected to return to Bournemouth, but was currently over the max landing weight. As there was no emergency situation, the aircraft was flown until the landing weight was within limits.
The engine was not shut down in flight. Total time block to block was around 55 minutes I believe.
Upon arrival at BOH the aircraft was inspected, the engine was boroscoped and the flap assembly cleaned and checked (the aircraft was apparently black with the ‘bee juice’ I mentioned earlier. The aircraft was taken for an air test (with no passengers obviously). It was found that at some power settings there were still surges / bangs.
The engine was inspected and boroscoped again, no blades were found to have been damaged. The engineers changed the engine and I believe that the incident engine has been sent away to be stripped down.
Apparently it is has proved to be extremely difficult to get the black staining off the aircraft…