Bird strikes: Could one have caused the South Korea plane crash?

South Korean officials are conducting an emergency safety investigation after 179 people died in the country’s worst-ever plane crash on Sunday.

Moments before the flight was due to land, air traffic control issued a bird strike warning – an alert about the risk of colliding with birds.

The investigation will look to confirm if a bird strike did lead to the crash, or if other factors could have been involved.

A bird strike is a collision between a bird and an aircraft in flight.

They pose a danger to planes because jet engines can lose power if birds are sucked into them.

Bird strikes are very common.

In the US, more than 19,600 wildlife strikes were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration in 2023, the majority of which involved birds.

And there were over 1,400 bird strikes in the UK in 2022, only about 100 of which affected planes, according to data from the Civil Aviation Authority.

Bird strikes are very rarely linked to fatal plane crashes.

Engines could stall or shut down if birds are sucked into them, but pilots typically have time to account for this and make an emergency landing.

Pilots are trained to be especially vigilant during the early morning or at sunset, when birds are most active, according to aviation expert Professor Doug Drury, writing in an article for The Conversation this summer.

But deadly accidents involving bird strikes do happen.

Between 1988 and 2023, some 76 people died in the US after planes collided with wildlife, according to the FAA.

One notable incident is a 1995 crash near an Air Force base in Alaska. Some 24 Canadian and American airmen were killed after an aircraft collided with a flock of geese.

A bird strike also caused the famous “Miracle on the Hudson” incident in 2009, when an Airbus plane ditched onto New York’s Hudson River after colliding with a flock of geese. All 155 passengers and crew survived.

The events were dramatised in the 2016 film Sully, which starred Tom Hanks as the plane’s captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.

Officials have not confirmed whether the plane did in fact collide with any birds.

But a passenger on the flight messaged a relative, saying that a bird “was stuck in the wing” and that the plane could not land, local media reported.

Lee Jeong-hyun, the chief of the Muan fire department, said a bird strike and bad weather may have contributed to the crash – but that the exact cause was still being investigated.

Aviation expert Chris Kingswood, a pilot who has over 40 years’ experience and has flown the same type of aircraft involved in the crash, says video footage doesn’t clearly show the cause of the incident.

However, he noted the plane was without its landing gear and wasn’t using its flaps in the expected way, suggesting that “everything happened really quite quickly”.

“You would normally be forced into that kind of situation if you lose both engines,” he told the BBC. “A commercial aeroplane can fly reasonably well and safely on one engine.”

He added that altitude is crucial if a bird strike damages both engines, as pilots at low altitude would face “a huge number of decisions in a very short space of time”.

He said there is an alternative system to operate both the landing gear and flaps if the engines fail.

But according to Kingswood: “If they were at a relatively low altitude, just several thousand feet, then they’ve really got to focus on flying the aeroplane and finding somewhere safe to put it down.”

Other experts have questioned whether a bird strike alone could have caused the crash.

“A bird strike is not unusual, problems with an undercarriage are not unusual,” Geoffrey Thomas, the editor of Airline News, told Reuters.

“Bird strikes happen far more often, but typically they don’t cause the loss of an airplane by themselves,” he added.

Australian airline safety expert Geoffrey Dell told the news agency: “I’ve never seen a bird strike prevent the landing gear from being extended.”

He said a bird strike could have impacted the plane’s engines if a flock had been sucked in, but it would not have shut them down straight away, meaning pilots would have had time to deal with the situation.