An Air India Express flight from Visakhapatnam to Bengaluru suffered a bird strike while en route on Monday but completed its journey and landed safely at Kempegowda International Airport, with all 148 passengers and crew members on board unharmed, the airline has confirmed.
Flight IX2065, operating the carrier's Bhogapuram-Bengaluru sector, reported the bird strike during its journey. The aircraft landed normally at Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport and was subsequently moved to a parking stand, where ground engineers and technical teams began inspecting it for any possible damage to the structure or the engines, in line with standard aviation safety procedures.
"Our Bhogapuram-Bengaluru flight reported a bird strike. The aircraft was inspected and has been declared serviceable. There has been no impact on our operations," Air India Express said in a statement issued after the incident.
No injuries were reported among the passengers or the crew. The airline said the inspection found the aircraft fit to fly, and normal operations continued unaffected.
Bird strikes are among the most frequently reported safety events in commercial aviation worldwide, and Indian carriers are no exception. Although the incidents rarely cause injuries, every reported strike triggers a mandatory inspection protocol: engineers check the nose cone, windshield, wings and engines for signs of impact, and the aircraft is released for service only after being declared fit.
Engines on modern commercial aircraft are certified to withstand the ingestion of birds of specified sizes, and crew are trained to handle the resulting vibrations or abnormal readings.
Monday's incident is the latest in a string of bird strikes reported by airlines operating in Indian airspace this month. On Saturday, October 17, an Emirates flight from Dubai to New Delhi encountered a bird strike on arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport. The incident occurred when flight EK517 was landing on the runway near Terminal 3 at around 3.10 pm.
Emirates said the aircraft landed safely, but the return flight was delayed while the aircraft underwent necessary repairs, and hotel accommodation was arranged for affected passengers.
Earlier in the month, on October 4, an IndiGo flight from Pune to Hyderabad suffered a bird strike that was detected after the aircraft landed at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad. Flight 6E352 sustained minor damage to its nose cone, but no passenger injuries were reported. And in August, Air India flight AI1741, operating from New Delhi to Patna, reported a bird strike near its right-side engine while landing at Patna airport.
That aircraft too touched down safely, with no engine damage reported.
The latest incident also comes at a time of heightened attention to aviation safety in India, following a separate scare involving an Air India wide-body aircraft earlier this month.
On October 14, Air India flight AI-2030, operating from Frankfurt to Delhi, made an emergency landing at Jaipur airport at approximately 9.35 am IST after the aircraft transmitted 'Squawk 7500', the internationally designated transponder code that indicates unlawful interference or a suspected hijacking. The alert was received by Ahmedabad Air Traffic Control, and the aircraft landed safely in Jaipur.
The aircraft departed Jaipur for its onward destination later that afternoon after security agencies conducted a comprehensive sanitisation sweep and the Aerodrome Committee concluded that the threat alert had been resolved.
In parallel, Indian carriers have been operating with disrupted schedules to several destinations in Saudi Arabia amid what they have described as an evolving security situation in the region. Air India announced that all its flights to and from Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah stood cancelled until October 20, offering affected passengers full refunds, while Air India Express extended the suspension of its services to and from the three cities until the same date.
IndiGo cancelled its flights to and from Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Madinah until October 24, and Akasa Air extended the suspension of its Riyadh services until October 24 and Jeddah services until October 21. The airlines have said passenger and crew safety remains their priority and that they would continue monitoring developments before resuming affected operations.
Aviation safety experts say that bird strikes, while dramatic in description, are a well-understood hazard that the industry manages through layered safeguards. Airports in India are required to maintain bird hazard management programmes that include habitat control around runways, regular patrols during peak movement hours, and in some cases the use of distress calls, pyrotechnics and trained falconers to disperse flocks.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation tracks every reported strike, and airlines are obliged to file detailed reports that feed into a national database used to identify seasonal and location-specific patterns.
The monsoon and post-monsoon months are traditionally associated with increased bird activity around Indian airports, as open water bodies and lush vegetation attract large flocks, particularly at dawn and dusk when many flights arrive and depart. Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport, like other major airports, runs a continuous wildlife hazard management programme in coordination with airline operators.
For passengers, the reassurance lies in the outcome that played out on Monday: a reported strike, a safe landing, a thorough inspection, and an aircraft declared fit to fly again. The swift return of the aircraft to service, coupled with the airline's statement that operations were unaffected, underlines how routine the response to such events has become in commercial aviation.
Air India Express has said it will continue to follow its established safety protocols, and the aircraft involved in Monday's incident has re-entered the fleet after clearance by the airline's engineering teams.
Passengers who lived through the incident would have noticed little beyond a normal landing. Bird strikes that do not damage the engines or penetrate the windscreen typically produce a brief shudder or thud, and in many cases the crew inform the passengers only after touchdown.
What matters, say pilots, is the discipline that follows: the strike is logged, the maintenance control centre is alerted while the aircraft is still airborne, and a dedicated inspection team is waiting by the time the aircraft reaches its stand. Only after every check is signed off does the aircraft get towed back into the departure line-up.
For a carrier the size of Air India Express, which operates hundreds of domestic and short-haul international sectors every day, such turnarounds are routine, and the airline's statement that Monday's strike had "no impact on our operations" reflects an operating model built to absorb exactly these kinds of disruptions.
(Reporting based on NDTV and The Economic Times.)