{"id":75606,"date":"2024-06-18T13:01:04","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T13:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/18\/virgin-australia-flight-makes-emergency-landing-after-bird-strike-sparks-fire\/"},"modified":"2024-06-18T13:01:04","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T13:01:04","slug":"virgin-australia-flight-makes-emergency-landing-after-bird-strike-sparks-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/18\/virgin-australia-flight-makes-emergency-landing-after-bird-strike-sparks-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Australia flight makes emergency landing after ‘bird strike’ sparks fire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Virgin<\/div>


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A suspected bird strike sparked a fire on a passenger plane shortly after take-off – forcing it to make an emergency landing.<\/p>\n

The blaze shut down one engine of a Virgin Australia 737-800 flight from Queenstown in New Zealand<\/strong><\/a> to Melbourne in Australia<\/strong><\/a>, according to New Zealand’s fire service.<\/p>\n

The fire caused the flight to divert, and it landed safely at Invercargill Airport – around 120 miles (193km) south of Queenstown.<\/p>\n

The incident may have been caused by “a possible bird strike”, the airline’s chief operations officer Stuart Aggs said in a statement.<\/p>\n

He said he was not aware of any physical injuries to the 67 passengers or six crew members on board.<\/p>\n

Passengers would be accommodated in Invercargill overnight and new flights would be arranged, he added.<\/p>\n

Video footage taken by witnesses on the ground showed short bursts of flames coming from the plane after it took off from Queenstown Airport on Monday.<\/p>\n

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Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz) said it received a report of a fire in an engine on a plane just after it had taken off from Queenstown.<\/p>\n

“Air traffic control then advised Fenz it was diverting to Invercargill,” a spokesperson told the New Zealand Herald.<\/p>\n

“Something has happened to one engine. That engine has been shut down. They had an uneventful flight to Invercargill.”<\/p>\n

No further information about what happened at the time of the incident was known, said Catherine Nind, a spokesperson for Queenstown airport.<\/p>\n

Plane ‘spitting flames out the engine’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Hayward, who was on the flight, said there were “cries of panic” from passengers.<\/p>\n

“The plane starts taking off, wheels leave the runway, next thing you know – bang! Flashes come out of the side, right in the engine,” he told ABC News Breakfast’s Michael Roland.<\/p>\n

“We’ve flown into [a group of birds], so all you hear is ‘boom, boom, boom’.”<\/p>\n

He added: “Within seconds of leaving the ground, your plane’s spitting flames out the engine… so, quite the dramatic take-off.”<\/p>\n

Another passenger said they had been told there had been a bird strike.<\/p>\n

They wrote on the X social media platform: “Pilot confirmed us hitting several birds on the way out. We’re now sitting on the Invercargill runway as the fire crews check for damage.”<\/p>\n

Read more from Sky News:<\/strong>
Police in Spain share footage of shark as beaches shut<\/a><\/strong>
On the ‘Train of Death’: Electric shocks and beatings<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Queenstown is a popular tourist destination on New Zealand’s South Island, famous for skiing and adventure tourism.<\/p>\n

The rate of birds striking planes at New Zealand’s airports is about four in every 10,000 aircraft movements, the country’s aviation regulator says on its website.<\/p>\n

The consequences vary in severity depending on where the aircraft is hit, the size of the birds and the pilot’s reaction, the Civil Aviation Authority says.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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A suspected bird strike sparked a fire on a passenger plane shortly after take-off – forcing it to make an emergency landing. The blaze shut down one engine of a Virgin Australia 737-800 flight from Queenstown in New Zealand to Melbourne in Australia, according to New Zealand’s fire service. The fire caused the flight to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/24\/03\/512x512\/skynews-gfxwhatsapppromo-gfxwhatsapp_6490206.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1386,1336,6989,80,850,6990,6998,2335,9407],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75608,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75606\/revisions\/75608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}