Such a disastrous loss of power now a rarity
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Birdstrikes are a relatively common hazard in flying but few cause such catastrophic damage as the one which crippled Ryanair Flight FR4102 when landing at Rome's Ciampino Airport early yesterday morning.
The worst that usually happens in a birdstrike is to lose power from a single engine, but modern jets can still even take off. In the 1980s a birdstrike destroyed an engine on board an Aer Lingus Boeing 737 that counted Gay Byrne among its passengers, but the aircraft was still able to continue its take-off.
A birdstrike which robs an aircraft of almost all power from both engines is extremely rare. The 162 passengers aboard yesterday's Ryanair flight should be grateful that the pilots flying EI-DYG decided to put instinct before training and put their crippled plane down on the runway as quickly as possible.
When things go wrong, pilots are trained to abort a landing, climb to 3,000 feet, sort out the problem if they can, then descend for another attempt.
The pilots must have realised that any attempt to regain height would have resulted in a stall. This could have caused the uncontrollable jet to strike the runway tail first, possibly leading to a break-up of the fuselage and deaths among the passengers.
The Ryanair Boeing 737-800 slammed into the runway so hard that the main strut of the left-hand landing gear burst through the top of the wing. The fuselage is also likely to have been damaged, but the crash-landing at least enabled the undercarriage to absorb most of the impact and give the best protection to the 172 on board. The aircraft was less than eight months old.
Starlings are a major problem for bird controllers at airports. In winter they gather in huge flocks which wheel unpredictably about the sky. Normal control methods like repeated loud bangs, tame falcons or even distress calls are ineffective in controlling them
- GERRY BYRNE
