01 June 2009

Boeing 737 forced to land after striking a .... bumblebee


"BUG" I SYSTEMET: Denne humla fikk SAS-flyet til å snu i dag tidlig. Foto: SAS
A SAS Norway Boeing 737-700, flight BU-4683/SK-4683 from Oslo Gardermoen (Norway) to Malaga,SP (Spain) with 134 passengers, had to return to Gardermoen Airport after the airspeed indicators started to disagree shortly after takeoff. The airplane landed safely about 35 minutes after departure.

Mechanics found a bumble-bee had struck and embedded itsself into one of the pitot tubes of the airplane after takeoff, effectively blocking that dynamic port of the pitot system.
At the link there is also this report of a fatal crash for the same basic reason:
Insects had blocked the pitot system of a Birgenair Boeing 757-200 registration TC-GEN at Puerto Plata (Dominican Republic) while the airplane was parked at the airport for 25 days. The crew continued their takeoff of flight 301 to Frankfurt (Germany) on February 6th 1996 despite disagreeing airspeed indicators at the 80 knots call during takeoff and could not cope with the resulting simultaneous stall and overspeed warnings at around 7000 feet MSL. The airplane crashed 5 minutes after takeoff killing all 176 passengers and 13 crew.
Link found at Reddit. Photo credit to the Norwegian Dagbladet.

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