A FedEx cargo plane made an emergency landing at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport after a bird strike caused an engine fire.
Air traffic after the emergency landing at around 8 a.m. Saturday was briefly halted as a precaution, but operations resumed shortly after, said Lenis Valens, a spokesperson for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Three people were on board, and all got off the plane safely, Valens said.
No injuries were reported, and the fire on the cargo plane was contained to the engine, Valens said.
“We need to return to the airport”
Audio recorded by LiveATC captured a person calmly saying the FedEx aircraft needed to “shut down for a possible bird strike” immediately. “We need to return to the airport.”
Moments later, another person is heard saying: “We believe we saw their engine fall off the right wing.” The audio indicates the bird strike happened when the plane was several hundred feet off the ground.
A FedEx spokesperson said the plane was headed for Indianapolis but due to the bird strike “declared an emergency and returned safely to Newark after dealing with the resulting engine damage,” which included an engine fire.
“The training, expertise, and professionalism demonstrated by our FedEx pilots was exemplary. We are thankful for the quick actions of our crew and first responders,” said the spokesperson, Austin Kemker.
“They handled it like champs”
Kenneth Hoffman, a pilot on another flight, said as his flight was pushing off, they heard from air traffic control that there was an emergency in progress. Hoffman posted a video on social media of a FedEx plane on the ground at the Newark airport with flames shooting from its side as it slowed to a stop with fire rescue equipment nearby. While it sounded like everyone was OK, there was a lot of smoke and the airport was shut down for 15 to 20 minutes, Hoffman said.
The pilots’ response was great, Hoffman said.
“They handled it like champs,” he told the Associated Press. “At the end of the day, that’s what our training is all about.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate the incident. A statement from the FAA said the “strike damaged one of the Boeing 767’s engines.” The National Transportation Safety Board also said it would investigate.
Bird strikes rarely force emergency landings
Bird strikes are aviation hazards that sometimes cause major disruptions. Birds were blamed for bringing down a jetliner that Captain “Sully” Sullenberger landed on the Hudson River in 2009.
The FAA has said bird strikes are increasing, with more than 19,000 wildlife strikes at 713 U.S. airports in 2023. Only rarely do they cause so much damage that jetliners are forced to make emergency landings.
The emergency landing at Newark comes at a time of heightened awareness of flight problems. In the past month, there have been four major aviation disasters in North America. They include the Delta flight that overturned upon landing in Toronto on Feb. 17, the Feb. 6 crash of a commuter plane in Alaska that killed all 10 people on board, and the Jan. 26 midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight at Reagan National Airport that killed all 67 aboard the two aircraft.
Earlier this week, smoke filled the cabin of a Delta plane in Atlanta, and a Southwest jet was forced to abort a landing in Chicago after a near miss on the tarmac.
More Americans than ever are flying – nearly 3 million a day – but some travelers are anxious after recent events.
CBS News aviation safety analyst Robert Sumwalt believes the timing of these incidents is coincidental.
He does say, however, “If we continue to have these sorts of events, the airline industry will have an image crisis.”
Keep in mind, the reason all these recent incidents are making news is because they’re incredibly rare. In fact, one MIT statistics professor estimates the risk of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 100 million.
