My first bird hit, or was it really so?

A fear of bird hits had been registered at the back of my mind having watched the movie Sully – a depiction of a real life bird hit that led to emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in January 2009. The flight faced a bird hit a few minutes after takeoff leading to severe damage to both the engines, forcing pilot Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger to land the aircraft right into Hudson river. Had Sully not decided to do so, lives would have been lost; but he managed to save every single soul on the aircraft. Watch the movie for more details.

Just a few minutes after take-off, I saw a series of blasts from the left hand side engine of the Indigo flight 6E 395 out of Mumbai on 1^st March 2018. The blasts, which I could compare to a Sindri (King Kong) bomb blast in magnitude, would have lasted for any time between 30 seconds to a minute. In the air, that’s a very long duration if you ask me. I was anticipating the engines to explode anytime. Immediate and natural thought that occurred to me was that there will be an emergency landing and we may or may not survive. I assumed this was a bird hit and even if I had the awareness of good survival rates in case of bird hits, those blasts were still scary!

I was seated on the aisle seat and my parents on the inner seats. We looked at each other and the faces asked the same question – is this it? We uttered nothing for the first couple of minutes, because we all were possibly thinking about the same thing – what will happen after us? What about our loved ones?

Several thoughts, mostly about my siblings and my wife kept zig-zagging in the mind in less than 60 seconds. What would they do on hearing the news? How will they come to know? By when will they come to know? How will they react and face the loss? What will they do when they need us? Will my insurance guys give them the dues? What will happen to family assets – physical and financial? What about the close friends? How will those friends who aren’t in touch get to know? What about the other important people in my life?

Just for a moment, not for too long, a passing thought did cross my mind - what about the job and the company I work for? A few people might shed a tear for me – faces of those who might flashed in front of me. I realized most will move on fast enough. I realized there was no point in thinking about these in that particular moment. Even if you hold a critical position, even if you have great personal relationships at office, you’re never indispensable.

By this time, my rational mind had taken over the emotional one. I reasoned, nothing will be in my control if this was the end of my life. Nothing. All I have is those few minutes. I had to live through these minutes positively. I’m not religious, but not an atheist either. I said a few prayers, thanked the God for all he’s given me in this life and asked him to take care of my dear ones if we don’t survive.

Meanwhile, the blasts had stopped. The engine had been giving resistance and we felt the aircraft jittering – the way a car does when put in the wrong gear. This was also brief. Much later, after the pilot announced, I realized the engine had stalled at this moment.

I decided to focus on my parents. I told them that this could be just a bird hit and it’s far from being all over. I pointed to them that the aircraft seems to be in control (and it was after the jitters). I opined that the engine hadn’t blasted, the pilot will be taking action and in all likelihood we’ll land back safely. I bluffed that bird hits keep happening daily (to realize later that I was right) and that there’s nothing to worry. My mother acted strong, echoing what I said and focusing on the positives. Pappa was calm and quiet and inquiring on what’s happening.

Murmurs from other passengers had started growing louder. But no one had shrieked or shown any panic, yet. Their anxiety got out of hands when the cabin crew was sent by the pilots to check and report back if they saw anything alarming.

A few people vocally sought answers from the crew to questions everyone had kept to themselves so far. They wanted to know what exactly happened and the future course of action. They wanted the pilot to immediately announce and update all passengers. While the crew was shouting on top of their voices to remain calm and seated, some smart and/or anxious passengers wanted a personal briefing from the crew. Amid the brief chaos, one flight attendant had to shout that it is probably a bird hit and such incidents keep happening and there’s nothing to panic. She pleaded people to let the captain focus on taking stock of the situation and decide, post which he will provide an update. But that also wasn’t enough to calm some people down. All of these anxious people were educated as they were speaking in English. Kudos to the crew for remaining calm and not mistreating any passenger.

People who know me have rarely heard me shout. I don’t know what happened, but I heard a loud voice coming out from my mouth - “GUYS, PLEASE LET THE PILOT DO HIS JOB. PLEASE LET HIM DO HIS JOB. WE ARE BETTER OFF WITH HIM RESCUING THE PLANE THAN UPDATING US!” To my surprise, this helped! A few other passengers supported me and eventually better sense prevailed. The cabin crew took over from there and finally, there was some calm.

What followed were several minutes of uncomfortable calmness. Nervous faces looking at each other, folded hands praying to their respective gods. The aircraft seemed to have taken a couple of right turns but seemed to be flying at the same altitude with no danger visible to the passengers. Assuming the pilots had decided to continue with the journey, a few voices demanded the cabin crew to land the aircraft instead. The crew had however occupied their seats and hence were unavailable for any response to these demands.

After those long five or so minutes, it was a bit of relief to hear the captain announce, “Cabin crew, be seated for landing”. But then, a realization struck that the engine might be damaged and what if landing failed? I wasn’t the only one with this fear. As the aircraft began its descent, prayers intensified and people set their eyes at the window. The landing at Mumbai airport was as normal as it usually is. But the instant applause that the passengers gave was no less melodramatic than climax of a movie.

As the aircraft taxied in, people finally started smiling and joking. The captain made an announcement once the plane was parked, first apologizing for his late update and then sharing that a possible bird hit at an altitude of around 7000 feet had stalled the left hand side engine and hence they decided to go for emergency landing, safety being most important. The fire brigade had immediately positioned themselves around the aircraft, much to people’s anxiety for a few more minutes. The engineering team swiftly arrived to do their checks and investigation. No further announcements were given about what happened. After around 45 minutes, we were shifted to another aircraft to be flown to our destination, where the landing was once again applauded by the passengers.

As I was disembarking from the aircraft, I stopped by at the exit to express my gratitude to the cabin crew. I asked them if this was their first bird hit experience. Neither of the 2 attendants replied in an affirmative.

Some twist in the tale:

It took me a week to get access to a laptop and blog this experience as I was on a hectic tour. Just yesterday, on 12^th March 2018, an Indigo flight had to land back in Ahmedabad within 40 minutes of take-off due to a mid-air engine failure on Monday. Today, the DGCA grounded Indigo’s eight A320 Neo planes with faulty Pratt & Whitney engines. This prompted me to re-confirm what was the issue with the flight 6E 395. And this is what I see:

Click here for a link for the above news bit.

So, what we assumed was a bird hit, was actually an engine failure. Ok!

What's interesting is that the captain in his announcement didn’t once mention that there is a possible engine failure and chose to blame this on a bird-hit. On the other hand, Indigo in its official statement hasn’t mentioned a bird-hit at all.

Nevertheless, some simple takeaways from the experience:

• Don’t panic. It helps no one. Keep calm. It does wonders.
• Share your flight details with your closest folks every time you fly / travel.
• Ensure you have nominated someone on all your assets and insurance policies. Also, share these details with the nominated person(s). If possible, keep sharing an updated list of assets and nominations with a trusted person or your lawyer if you have one.

There are some other philosophical lessons also which I took away from the experience. I think I’ve given some material for you to take your own!

Likelihood of a bird hit

Before I came to know this was engine failure, I did some googling and mini-research on bird hits in India. I thought I’d share it just to share a perspective.

On an average, 60 to 70 bird hits are reported every month in India¹. With around 97,000 flights per month², that’s a 0.07% probability (1 in 1386 chance) of a bird hit if you’re flying out of or into Indian airports.

These numbers may mean that most air transport professionals - both DGCA and airline staff at almost every major airport are likely to have handled a bird hit. Also, the probability of a passenger taking (let’s say) 12 flights a year and facing at least one bird hit in a year is still less than 1% (around 0.86%). I am not aware of any plane crashes or casualties because of bird hits over the past few years (do correct me if I’m wrong). So, while bird hits pose a risk to air travel, numbers show that they rarely lead to fatal accidents.

PS: Boria Majumdar was also on the same flight. Click here for Boria's tweet about the bird hit.

Sources:

1: News report (On average two birdhits reported from Indian airports every day)

2: DGCA website (http://dgca.nic.in/reports/Traffic-ind.htm)