Air India crash: Bird strike a possible cause as mayday call being probed

BENGALURU/SINGAPORE – Investigators will need to understand the nature of a mayday transmission from an Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12, but a possible cause could be a bird strike, preventing the plane from achieving the optimum speed for take-off, aviation experts said.

Aviation professional Hemanth DP told The Straits Times that the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner had a spotless record.

“If a plane of this calibre and size has to crash at such a low height of about 600 feet (183m) minutes after take-off, it must have been a catastrophic failure,” said Mr Hemanth, chief executive officer of Asia Pacific Flight Training Academy in Hyderabad.

Air India Flight AI171, carrying 242 passengers and crew members, was heading to London Gatwick Airport when it

crashed shortly after take-off

. More than 290 people are known to have died, including those on the ground. There is at least one survivor from the plane.

Mr Hemanth said it was too early to tell with certainty what had happened, based on amateur videos of the crash taken from the ground.

He said it would take a very large flock of birds, and both engines ingesting the birds simultaneously, to bring the plane down so quickly after take-off.

A bird strike is considered one of the most common wildlife hazards in aviation. It tends to happen during take-off, landing, or low-altitude flight, when planes are most likely to encounter birds. Bird strikes can be dangerous, especially if birds are ingested into aircraft’s engines or hit critical components such as the windscreen or wings.

Over 90 per cent of bird strikes occur at low altitudes during take-off and landing.

When a bird strike occurs, pilots may declare a mayday emergency. The Air India pilot made a mayday call before the aircraft lost contact with air traffic control, the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation said.

A bird strike was believed to be a factor in the crash of a Jeju Air plane in South Korea in late December 2024, which killed 179 people. Feathers and blood

were found in both engines

.

The Boeing 737-800 plane, which departed from Bangkok for Muan county in south-western South Korea,

belly-landed and overshot the regional airport’s runway

, bursting into flames after hitting an embankment. One of the pilots reported a bird strike and declared an emergency shortly before trying to land.

In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River shortly after taking off from LaGuardia Airport in New York City. The plane, an Airbus A320, had flown into a flock of geese, severely damaging both engines.

Mr Michael Daniel, managing director of consultancy Aviation Insight, said the nature of the mayday emergency transmission will be crucial information for investigators.

Video footage shows the plane’s landing gear was down and the flaps retracted, he told ST.

“This would be counter to normal take-off procedures unless the ‘declared’ mayday affected the take-off,” said Mr Daniel, who is also a member of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators.

“Normally, (raising) the gear up is one of the first items to do soon after rotation, in order to gain airspeed.”

Rotation refers to the point when the pilot takes off from the surface of the runway, raising the nose of the airplane to fly.

While it would be presumptuous at this point to draw any conclusions, he added that the video footage will give some indication of the data to be used in investigations.

“Setting aside the search and rescue efforts, the investigators will need to locate and interpret (what is on) the data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder,” he said.