Hainan Airlines flight forced to land after bird strike

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-05-20

The nose of the Hainan Airlines plane had a massive indent from the
impact with a bird, May 16. (Internet photo)

Passengers on a Hainan Airlines flight from Taiyuan in northern China's Shanxi to Xiamen in southern China's Fujian province experienced an unexpected delay to their journey on May 19 when their plane was grounded after hitting a bird.

One of the passengers, surnamed Zhu, said the flight had gone as planned until reaching its transit airport, Hefei Xinqiao International Airport, in eastern China's Anhui province. He said that he then felt a sudden jolt that did not feel like turbulence, adding that passengers feared the worst. After successfully landing, the flight attendants asked the passengers to take all of their belongings with them instead of simply letting them wait in the airport lounge — a bizarre request considering that the airport was only a transit stop, Zhu said.

The reason became evident upon disembarking the plane, however, as the nose of the plane was misshapen with blood all over it, Zhu said.

The passengers were forced to wait in the lounge for hours, only to be told that the flight was cancelled. The airline made the necessary arrangements to get the passengers to their destinations, Zhu said, but after a ten-hour delay, the airline refuses to compensate the passengers for the trouble.

The situation could have been much worse, however. Birds hit airplanes every day and are a source of millions of dollars in damage, while in the worst cases they can cause the plane to crash.