Vietnam Airlines plane makes emergency landing after hitting bird

Vietnam Airlines plane makes emergency landing after hitting bird

A Vietnam Airlines aircraft heading to Ho Chi Minh City on Monday had to return to Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport after it hit a bird.

Flight VN249 made the emergency landing about 20 minutes after departure. The crew had heard unusual sounds in the engine, the national carrier said in a statement.

At the airport, technicians found a dead bird carcass in the engine, it said.

“The problem has been identified as a collision between a bird and the aircraft,” a Vietnam Airlines representative said.

All passengers were transferred to another aircraft to resume their journey to HCMC.

Early this month, the Airports Corporation of Vietnam sought the government’s approval to increase service fees in order to fund a system that it said would help detect foreign objects on runways at the country’s two largest airports in Hanoi and HCMC. The airports together receive 65 percent of flights to and from Vietnam.

The state-owned manager of 22 airports now wants to charge international flights US$35 each and domestic flights $17. The new 24/7 monitoring project is expected to cost more than VND1.16 trillion ($52.09 million).

Now humans are in charge of scanning the runways seven times a day to keep them clear of birds and foreign objects that can threaten flight safety, the corporation said.

However, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) has slammed the proposal, arguing that the cost is huge and that it is unreasonable to collect higher service fees at all airports for the benefit of Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat.

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