A QANTAS Boeing 747 had to turn back to Johannesburg after one of its engines suffered a bird strike, the airline said today, the latest in a string of incidents to beset the Australian carrier.
Qantas said the plane's number two engine shut down with turbine damage after sucking in a bird shortly after takeoff, forcing an emergency landing.
The incident occurred late yesterday when QF64, with 171 passengers on board, was travelling from Johannesburg to Sydney.
"The aircraft is being worked on by engineers," a Qantas spokesman said.
"It's just a bit of damage to some of the turbine blades, it's not a huge thing.
"The flight crew followed procedure for the scenario and returned to Johannesburg."
The passengers have been given hotel accommodation overnight and the airline will try to get them on flights as soon as possible, he said.
Passengers have the option of catching a later flight on a different aircraft or waiting until the damage to the original plane has been repaired.
Bird strikes are not common and Qantas experienced two to four a year at the most, the spokesman said.
Qantas has had plagued with mechanical issues over the last two weeks since grounding its fleet of Airbus A380s after an engine exploded on one of the superjumbos on November 4, forcing an emergency landing in Singapore.
Yesterday one of Qantas' smaller Boeing 717s was hit by lightning on a regional flight between the destinations of Alice Springs and Darwin hours earlier, causing "minor damage" to the exterior.
The incidents follow the return to Sydney of a Qantas Boeing 747 bound for Buenos Aires on Monday after it suffered an electrical fault which caused smoke to pour into the cockpit.
But the latest incident has been put down to plain bad luck.
"It's bad luck for the flight and bad luck for the birds," the spokesman said.
A US Airways Airbus A320 famously ditched in New York's Hudson River last January after a bird strike on both of its engines, in an incident widely known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" because there was no loss of life.
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