Delta B767 in multiple bird strike
 

A Delta Airlines B767 had a multiple bird strike on take off from FCO.
(7 July 07)
Both engines were struck by seagulls. Some of the right engine fan blades had large chunks taken out. The left engine had many fan blades damaged at midway along the blade leading edge.

The noise on take off was extremely loud, sounding like a large piston powered aircraft flying low overhead.

The aircraft dumped some fuel before returning to FCO. Bird strike evidence on cockpit window, right engine nose cowl, bird remnants on right outboard leading edge slat and right main undercarriage. The main gear struts were deflated.

I say a very well done to the flight crew for what must have been a nerve wracking flight:D

I certainly had my fingers crossed for a safe outcome.

All in a days work for a trained crew, I'd have thought?

Dumb and fatuous remarks we can do without.
Multiple birdstrikes are NOT funny.
Thanks, keel beam. Any more info? Sounds like a double engine change for a start. Hat off to the crew.

[QUOTE]
All in a days work for a trained crew, I'd have thought?
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Well hopefully not every day well done to the crew:D:D

FCO for all of us domestic us pilots is: ROME, Leonardo Da Vinci

I wouldn't want to suck birds into all engines on a good day...birds can bring planes down.

Deleted my pointless response to a 767 with both engines damaged on take-off being 'all in a days work'. Quite right Christiaan.

"FCO for all of us domestic us pilots is: ROME, Leonardo Da Vinci"

But known as Roma Fiumicino to the rest of the World. Bet the flight deck tucked their trousers into their socks when they walked out.

PM

"All in a days work for a trained crew, I'd have thought?"

Can I ask why there is such a negative response to this comment? Im not a pilot but surely the professional pilots out there train intensively to be able to handle emergency situations? I don't think it is a derogatory remark at all. I think it should be recieved as a compliment that we expect our pilots to be so highly trained and so capable of handling such situations. I certainly do. I pay enough money for my flights to expect this!

Is it too much to expect someone to be able to carry out the job they are being payed for when the going gets tough. Pilots do carry out a very skilled job where there is very little response time to make a decision but don't get above your stations please!

Slinks

Slinks

Let me help you out with a good analogy if you are having difficulty understanding.

Soldiers train hard so they know what to do when they get shot at. It doesn't make the actual experience any less traumatic.

Now to stretch the analogy,

There's a big difference being shot at by a single gunman, and being caught in a long linear ambush on the Fallujah bypass....:uhoh:

Varied comments above about whether we "are trained" for such an event, or not :rolleyes: So most posters posing the question are not Professional Pilots I suspect ;)
The article / original post states However, we have no indication of the symptons / indications to the Flt Crew.

I can assure the readers, that I as an Airline Capt with an "EU Major", on twin jets, do not train for such a scenario. We train for either a single engine failure (a lot!), or occasionally for an "at altitude" double engine failure. We do not have a scenario where 1 engine is dead, and the other half dead etc.

Maybe other airlines do, but the scenario related to seems "out of the book". I am sure the crew, if presented with multiple engine problems, dealt with it well. However, to say they were "trained for this (specific) situation" seems somewhat unlikely :ooh:

Aaah, pilots, don't you just love them. When you take them for granted they bitch. When you compliment them they bitch :}:rolleyes:;) Nevertheless, very well done that Delta crew.

NigelOnDraft, thankyou... your post makes it clear that this is certainly a situation out of the ordinary and not something that has been trained for. Don't get me wrong I believe there is still a tremendous amount of skill and an amazing ability to make decisions under pressure involved even if a pilot has been trained for this scenario. I do believe that if someone goes into a job with these possible situations then he shouldnt go seeking recognition at every opportunity.

rmac, very good analogy. I have been in a live fire situation from close quarters in a pub alone in northern ireland and know for a fact that you cannot put such a situation down to training alone, the personality of the individual involved is the main factor in any situation. As you can probably tell, i didn't die.

NigelOnDraft gave the perfect answer to the statement "all in a days work" this is the internet, not everyone who reads these forums is a qualfied captain on 747s. Explaining the situation to the reading public does a hell of a lot more for the pilot community than taking a mightier than though position! rmac, Get off your high horse!

Well done to those of you at the front.:D

"All in a days work for a trained crew, I'd have thought?"

Did anyone say.."Another day at the office"?

This is an EXTRA ordinary event..hats off etc but purleeeeeeeze with the 'another normal day' routine.

I agree that this is not a situation that we pilots normally train for, though I did once "land" an MD80 simulator with double engine failure.

However I must say that I expect every flight crew to do just what this crew did, that is to continue flying the aircraft until back on the ground again.

Chrismas card for the guys who designed those engines then.

Surely we should be asking why so much engine damage was done by an encounter with a flock of birds. Flocks of gulls are not uncommon.

And the more curious of us will ask what the results of the engine bird ingestion certification tests looked like, and whether they match current knowledge of the bird threat.

bravo
 

TO THE CREW: WELL DONE!

I would never like to face a situation like this,but it can happen.
My question is: has ever seen the crew anything upon lineup on the rwy ?

The diameter of the fan is around 85 inches.

The average wingspan of a gull is 58 inches. They can weigh up to one and a half kilos.

An encounter with a flock of gulls is no trivial matter.

Without wanting to question the flt crew actions, I would be curious to know what the engine indications were in the flt deck, ANY sign of abnormal indications to BOTH eng at the same time and I would'nt be dumping fuel, it would be an immediate overweight re-land!!!


either way well done to the flt crew:D

Well done crew, and thank goodness the engine(s) gave out enough thrust to complete a safe landing.

Just to add weight to what others have said ....wasn't there a 4-engined a/c (USAF E3) downed by a flock of gulls not so many years ago?

Polluted beaches
 

Anybody heading to Rome's beaches for this summer's holidays...see if you can't change your destination! :ooh:

All of the above being factual makes you wonder why in Australia anyway, that pilots are perfectly happy to request/accept ATC approval for high speed (320 knots+) below 10,000ft on departure and arrival...when 250 knots is generally considered acceptable risk world wide..

It was a flock of Canada Geese, but yes, a USAF AWACS plane crashed after a massive bird ingestion on takeoff from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, in 1995. All 24 aboard perished.

Pictures of the scene as well as the results of a few other bird strike mishaps can be seen here

Numerous events of multiple engine damage due to birds similar to the event described in this thread. I don't recall a lot of discussion about these at the time. The design of the engine coupled with the basic training of the pilot to respond to symptoms has made these survivable.

I know that a whole lot of following thead respsonses will now be devoted to what if's.

Typical symptoms involved in similar events as described in subject thread starter , have been an engine surge, vibration heard and felt, slight increase in EGT and thrust loss of up to 10%. In some events one engine was shutdown.

These are NOT prictures of the 767 concerned but give a very good impression of Bird Strikes on a 67:

http://www.geocities.com/afwjr/767.html

:eek:

http://www.zero-meridean.nl/images/c_eindh_150796_2.jpg

1 airplane built for the toughest conditions,
4 engines,
1 flock of starlings...

34 dead.
7 severely injured.

Multiple birdhits can kill and such scenarios are definitely not routine.

kingair9,
Re 767 pics, looks like sparrows or starlings or something that size.
As xetroV said .... 1 flock of starlings .... can kill.
I've seen what a single gull can do to a Canberra engine... the first few compressor stages were lying in the bottom of the nacelle in post-it size bits. So an entire flock.....
Do we know where the flock at FCO came from? Gulls rarely go far inland in flocks, unless of course there is a garbage dump nearby.

xetroV
The C130 crash was not sparrows but starlings . A completely different bird when comparing bird strikes.
Starling flock in great numbers and have a higher body mass weight then starlings which in turn cause more damage.
Sparrows do not flock and are therfore not a high risk bird when talking about how much damage certain species cause.

Now if were talking Geese thats a whole new ball game. Pigeons and Gulls and even kestrels are the more common birds that may cause damage if an aircraft hits more then one.

:rolleyes:

Oops, you're right! I did mean to say starlings, but my translation was incorrect (English is not my native language). Corrected now. :)

Now, while starlings are still pretty small birds, a flock of these pretty small birds is clearly no laughing matter. Let alone a flock of seagulls.

Birds and their ability to down large aircraft

Yukla 27: E3 Sentry drought down by a flock of geese ingested into two engines (on the same side) on take-off from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. 24 POB; no survivors.

My point being: yes it (birdstrike) might be trained for, but, like a fire, I'd suggest not something welcomed by any pilot and if it's "all in a day's work", they need to move that particular runway...

In any case, it's not the actual birdstrike, it's the potential double flame-out which might follow. Which might not be such good news on a twin... :eek:

Not necessarily. A birdstrike in the cockpit can kill.

I know about a DC-3 that collected a gull through the right-hand windscreen. The only reason the FO survived was that he bent down or leaned over for some unrelated reason, litterally a couple of seconds before the impact. He was showered with glass and remains of the bird that hit the panel just behind him.

The earlier set of photos had a helicopter with a smashed windscreen. There it would seem the pilot survived only because he was wearing a bonedome, with the visor down....

FCO is on the coast


There are large flocks of gulls permanently resident in Calgary, which is about 600 nm as the gull flies from the coast. Of course, it's the garbage dumps which keep them there.

Slinks
"I pay enough money for my flights to expect this!"
I can't believe you said that :yuk:

KLM Barcelona
 

Don't forget the KLM737 which was written off at Barcelona following the nose gear damage by a birdstrike (buzzard) on take off from AMS. No serious injuries as I recall, but a dead 737 nonetheless...

NOD (post#10) states "that I as an Airline Capt with an "EU Major", on twin jets, do not train for such a scenario. We train for either a single engine failure (a lot!), or occasionally for an "at altitude" double engine failure".
Nigel...Thats relatively easy to fix.
My company has a birdstrike on T/O scenario which results in fire/failure in one engine and off the clock vibration in the other. The results range from a request for immediate return :D to a statement that we've lost an engine followed by a leisurely flog around the pattern while countless checklists are painstakingly read :ugh:

Wasdale....

believe it, I really said it...

"I pay enough for my flights to expect this" - relates to having highly trained pilots capable of handling emergency situations. Are you saying that you dont expect to have a highly trained pilot capable of handling an emergency when you fly as a passenger?

Please keep the comment in context, it was made before NigelOnDraft's post explaining that this situation is indeed not something that is trained for in a simulator. A response to MarcJF's post such as NigelOnDraft gave would have been the ideal response to the post and would have made the situation clear to a mere mortal.

Now I would still say "I pay enough for my flights to expect a highly trained crew who will give me the best possible chance of surviving an abnormal situation". Do you have a problem with that statement?

Slinks

Brazil's Globo TV Sunday evening (8 July) programme "Fantastico" aired a five-minute clip about a light twin air ambulance pilot hit in the face by a vulture and knocked unconscious last week. He came to and despite losing an eye, managed to land the aircraft. The Portuguese-language clip can be watched at:

http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/SaoPaul...8-5605,00.html

If you've the patience, at the end of the clip an airforce pilot being interviewed states that around 500 bird strikes a year are reported in Brazil and that the AF estimate another 1,500 go unreported.

Those of you who fly down here regularly will be aware of the vultures (urubú is the Brazilian term) on approach to GIG (rwy 10) and some other airports. There must be a Sod-related law determining that municipal rubbish dumps be positioned within 3km and in line with the most-used runways, preferably downwind.

Another, earlier, comment in the clip by a pilot flying the same type of light twin is that the immediate reaction on seeing birds ahead should be to pull up, as the birds will usually dive rather than climb away from a threat. Ok in a light plane with good visibility ahead, perhaps not so easy in a heavier aircraft's approach attitude.

As for "all in a day's work", I should hope not. I remember starlings and an Electra.

slinks....I do.

How have you rationalised what price is or is not ENOUGH?