A Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) air­craft on a sched­uled flight from Guyana's Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (CJIA) to Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Tues­day was forced to turn back af­ter the plane in­gest­ed a bird in its left en­gine. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, CAL said that the in­ci­dent oc­curred two min­utes af­ter take­off at an al­ti­tude of 3,000 feet. The bird strike dis­abled the left en­gine of the air­craft, which re­sult­ed in an emer­gency land­ing in Guyana, 11 min­utes af­ter be­ing air­borne. All emer­gency equip­ment and per­son­nel at the air­port, in­clud­ing Aero­drome Res­cue and Fire­fight­ing, were pre­pared for the ar­rival of the CAL air­craft. Pre­lim­i­nary in­spec­tion con­duct­ed by CAL se­nior en­gi­neer, Bryan Latch­man, re­vealed that sev­er­al fan blades were dam­aged.

As a re­sult of the in­ci­dent, the air­craft was ground­ed. Latch­man said that CAL has since dis­patched a main­te­nance sup­port team from Trinidad to as­sist in the re­pairs of the en­gine.Up to press time, the team of en­gi­neers was work­ing fever­ish­ly to re­pair the bad­ly dam­aged en­gine of CAL's jet­lin­er, the re­pair of which is ex­pect­ed to be cost­ly. How­ev­er, Latch­man is op­ti­mistic that the air­craft would be ser­vice­able short­ly. A to­tal of 158 per­sons were on­board the air­craft at the time of the in­ci­dent, six of whom were crew mem­bers. The Boe­ing 737-800 air­craft, reg­is­tra­tion 9Y-ANU, was com­mand­ed by Cap­tain Richard Law and as­sist­ed by first of­fi­cer Michael Abra­ham.

Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Hy­draulics, Robe­son Benn, vis­it­ed the Guyana air­port to have a first­hand look at the ex­tent of the dam­age to the air­craft. Benn said that, over the last two years, se­ri­ous at­ten­tion was placed on live­stock, pri­mar­i­ly poul­try farms lo­cat­ed in prox­im­i­ty of CJIA. He al­so stat­ed that dump­ing of en­trails from live­stock in the vicin­i­ty of the air­port con­sti­tutes a haz­ard to flight safe­ty be­cause it at­tracts vul­tures. These vul­tures have an av­er­age weight of two kilo­grammes and soar to al­ti­tudes in ex­cess of 5,000 in the air­port area. Large jet­lin­ers in the take­off pro­file usu­al­ly will be ac­cel­er­at­ing with speed up­wards of 160 knots. Strik­ing a two-kilo­gramme bird at that speed could be detri­men­tal to flight safe­ty.

Benn stat­ed that his min­istry will be work­ing close­ly with all stake­hold­ers in en­sur­ing that air­craft safe­ty is para­mount af­ter the CAL in­ci­dent.

CAL's re­sponse

Re­spond­ing to the in­ci­dent via text mes­sage yes­ter­day, Lau­ra As­b­jornsen, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL), said that flight BW 662 en­coun­tered what is termed a "bird strike." "Dam­age was sus­tained to the num­ber one en­gine and an emer­gency land­ing was made in George­town, Guyana. Some dam­age was done to the blades of the en­gine."All pas­sen­gers were safe and our main­te­nance and en­gi­neer­ing teams have as­sured us that they will get the air­craft up and run­ning as soon as pos­si­ble. As­b­jornsen said all pas­sen­gers were "resched­uled as best as they could have." She said that CAL ad­just­ed its sched­ules to ac­com­mo­date the flight de­lays.