A FedEx Boeing 767 cargo plane was hit by a bird shortly after taking off from Newark Airport in New Jersey on Saturday (March 1), and it made an emergency return landing with one engine on fire.
FedEx Flight 3609, which was originally scheduled to fly to Indianapolis, took off at 7:58 a.m. and landed safely 9 minutes later. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will investigate the incident.
Lenis Valens, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said the cargo plane landed at Newark Liberty International Airport in an emergency. He said the accident caused no casualties and the fire on the cargo plane was contained within the engine.
According to audio recorded by LiveATC, a flight communication recording platform, a crew member calmly said that the plane needed to be grounded immediately, “may have been hit by a bird,” and requested “we need to return to the airport.”
Moments later, another person said on the call: “We believe we saw their engine fall off the right wing.” The audio indicated that the bird strike occurred when the plane was a few hundred feet above the ground.
Valens said the emergency landing caused air traffic to be temporarily interrupted as a precaution, and operations were resumed shortly afterwards.
The emergency landing occurred at about 8 a.m. local time, with three people on board, and all were evacuated safely.
A FedEx spokesman said the plane was originally bound for Indianapolis, but due to the bird strike, “an emergency was declared and the engine damage (including an engine fire) was safely returned to Newark Airport.”
Kenneth Hoffman, the pilot of another flight, said that when his flight took off, they heard from air traffic control that there was an emergency. Hoffman posted a video on social media showing a FedEx plane on the ground at Newark Airport, with flames spewing from the side of the fuselage. Fire and rescue equipment was on standby as the plane slowed to a stop.
Hoffman said that while it sounded like everyone was OK, the airport was closed for 15 to 20 minutes because of the smoke. He praised the pilots for their response.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement that “the impact damaged one of the Boeing 767’s engines.”
Bird strikes are a major safety hazard in the aviation industry. In 2009, Sully “Captain” Sullenberger successfully landed a jetliner on the Hudson River, which was blamed on a bird strike.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there were more than 19,000 bird strikes at 713 airports in the United States in 2023, an increase of 14% from 2022. The report found that 65% of bird strikes occurred during takeoff or landing, and about 5% of bird strikes caused damage to the aircraft.
The emergency landing came at a time of increased awareness of flying issues. In the past month, four major aviation accidents have occurred in North America. They included the Feb. 6 crash of a commuter flight in Alaska that killed all 10 people on board, and the Jan. 26 mid-air collision between a U.S. Army helicopter and an American Airlines passenger plane at Washington’s Reagan National Airport that killed all 67 people on board both planes.
