American Airlines makes emergency landing after bird strike causes engine fire

An American Airlines flight from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina had to make an emergency landing at JFK Airport only minutes after takeoff due to an engine fire caused by a bird strike.

Flight 1722 left LaGuardia at 7:20 pm on Thursday 12 December 2024, but swiftly encountered the creature which caused severe damage and put the right engine entirely out of action, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said. The plane then flew on one engine only to John F Kennedy, just 17 km (11 miles) away from its departure point and, the airline confirmed, landed safely with no injuries to its 190 passengers and six crew.

Fireball

A producer from WCNC Charlotte happened to be on the Airbus A321 and was filming departure from inside the cabin when the incident occurred. In the footage captured, a grey form can be seen streaking into the engine, out of which a fireball then bursts. Audio reveals the pilot made a mayday call, reporting engine failure.

On landing, the passengers were deboarded and offered accommodation, with their flight rescheduled for the following morning. Meanwhile the aircraft underwent inspections and American apologised for the inconvenience to flyers. “We are grateful to our crew for their professionalism and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience this may have caused,” the airline said. 

Nearly a billion in bird strike damage every year

Estimates put the number of bird strikes every year in the thousands and they can be the cause of critical aviation incidents. According to Simple Flying, bird strikes are responsible for “annual damages of more than $900 million to U.S. civil and military aircraft”. Waterfowl, gulls, and raptors are the most likely species to be hit – and it was a flock of geese that triggered perhaps the world’s most notorious bird strike incident, almost 16 years ago.

On 15 January 2009, an aircraft on the same route as Flight 1722, out of Laguardia to Charlotte, hit a whole flock of geese which took not one but both engines out. Unable to reach any nearby air grounds, the pilot, US Airways Captain C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger made a forced emergency water landing in New York’s Hudson River, and 155 people, every single passenger and crew member, escaped with their lives. 

Attributing the safe landing and evacuation to his years of experience both as an Air Force pilot and commercial airline pilot, Sullenberger later told a US House of Representatives subcommittee that airlines were “under pressure to hire people with less experience. Their salaries are so low that people with greater experience will not take those jobs. We have some carriers that have hired some pilots with only a few hundred hours of experience. … There’s simply no substitute for experience in terms of aviation safety.”