Pelican collides with Mango plane

A collision with a pelican forced Mango Airline pilots‚ on route from Cape Town to Durban‚ to abort their flight.

On Sunday pilots of the Boeing 737 experienced a noticeable impact. After establishing that it had been struck by a pelican they also noticed that it had damaged the left horizontal stabiliser and they were forced to return to Cape Town International Airport.

According to Sybrand Strachan‚ Mango Airlines head of the fleet and technical department‚ bird strikes are fairly common‚ but not to the degree experienced by flight JE-348.

“Very seldom in my ten and a half years at Mango can I recall a time when the pilot had to return to the point of origin. At most I can name one or two incidents. Ninety percent of the time the flights that have to return do so because of a bird being ingested in the engine‚” Strachan said.

“It’s extremely rare to see a bird hit the stabilizer and cause the damage it did.”

Despite knowing they had to return‚ weight restrictions inhibited the pilots from making an immediate return. The aircraft continued to climb and reached a point 240 kilometres from Cape Town‚ at which stage it was able to make its descent back. “The pilots quickly established there were no control issues and no vibrations. From a safety point of view they did everything they were supposed to given the weight restrictions‚” Strachan said.

The damage caused on impact will ground the 737 for the several weeks. Mango owns and operates ten aircraft‚ meaning this incident will decrease its fleet by ten percent for the time being. Strachan remained optimistic that delays would be minimised. “It’s going to have some impact‚ there is no doubt about that‚ but we think it will be a very small‚ very minor impact. Sunday night we had to delay some flights‚ but we are mitigating some of the impact by adapting our schedule and rerouting some aircraft‚” Strachan said.

-TMG Digital/TimesLIVE