SpiceJet's Boeing 737 Max suffers a bird hit at Belgaum airport, engine blade damaged

A SpiceJet flight from Belgavi to Delhi suffered a bird hit at Belgaum airport on May 9, an Airports Authority of India (AAI) official said. However, the flight landed safely at the airport in the capital. Specific details were not immediately available.

The Boeing 737-8 MAX aircraft had around 187 passengers onboard, according to an airline official at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) here. "On May 9, SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating SG-8472 from Belgavi (Karnataka) to Delhi suffered a bird hit. The aircraft landed safely at Delhi," a SpiceJet spokesperson said in a statement.

It was a Boeing MAX plane, as per the flight tracking website flightradar24.Com. As the plane faced technical glitches, SpiceJet's flight from the national capital to Jharsuguda (Odisha) was delayed by a few hours as it was to be operated with the same aircraft.

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The flight to Jharsuguda, which was scheduled to take off at around 11:55 am, departed at about 2 pm and was operated by another aircraft. However, the airline official at the IGIA told passengers waiting for the flight to Jharsuguda that the delay was due to the plane suffering a bird hit while landing at the airport here.

"The flight was delayed due to technical reasons... The plane (coming from Belgavi) had a bird hit while landing. The engine blade is damaged. The technical team is working on it," SpiceJet Duty Manager at the Delhi airport Akshay Anand told a PTI correspondent who travelled on the flight to Jharsuguda.

Many passengers travelling to Jharsuguda for business purposes faced inconvenience due to the flight delay. An engineer from a Japanese firm, Hitachi Kayama Masahiro, who is to visit the Steel Authority of India's plant at Rourkela, said, "The flight delay has upset my further travel plans. I have to travel by road for 3 hours from Jharsuguda." 

Dalmia Group Tax Manager Rohit Krishna Varshney said, "I am a frequent traveller on this route. Delay in SpiceJet flights on this route is a routine affair. Today it may be due to technical reasons."

Another passenger Varsha Prasad said she has to further travel 2.30 hours from Jharsuguda to Jindal Power Plant at Tamnar, Chhattisgarh. "The delay will upset my schedule. Since there are no other flights on this route, we have no option but to wait for this flight," she had said at the Delhi airport.

SpiceJet is the only airline that has services on the Delhi-Jharsuguda route. One flight, which started recently, is operated daily. 

(With inputs from PTI)

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