British Airways Aircraft Suffers Bird Strike While Landing In Lagos

A British Airways passenger aircraft experienced a bird strike while landing in Lagos.  The multiple impacts led to issues such as a hydraulic leak, causing smoke to emanate from the aircraft’s landing gear.

The aircraft was a Boeing 777-300ER, which bears the registration G-STBE, Per Second News gathered.

British Airways flight BA75 is a scheduled service from its base at London Heathrow to Lagos Murtala Muhammed International Airport inNigeria.  The UK flag carrier operates this flight daily, with a planned departure of 11:05 local time. Arrival in Lagos at 18:40 local time.

On December 30th, flight BA75 departed London over an hour late. Takeoff from Heathrow’s runway 27R occurred at 12:21 local time, some 86 minutes behind schedule. However, the flight was able to make up good time en route. Indeed, it touched down in Nigeria just half an hour late, at 19:10 local time, after five hours and 50 minutes in the air.

However, that isn’t to say that the flight was without incident. The aircraft experienced multiple bird strikes during its landing flare to Lagos’s longest runway, 18R. This resulted in a hydraulic leak. Fortunately, the crew was able to safely land the aircraft and vacate the runway as planned.

However, while taxiing from the runway to its stand, the aircraft lost its nose wheel steering. An issue with the main landing gear also arose, with smoke emanating from it. Furthermore, the aircraft’s hydraulic C system indicated zero quantity. This meant that it was completely drained of its hydraulic fluid.

Following these issues, the crew elected to stop the aircraft on the taxiway, and declared PAN PAN over the radio. However, despite attempting to make contact multiple times, there was initially no response from the emergency services.

Eventually, 11 minutes after landing, two firemen made their way over to the aircraft on foot with handheld extinguishers. They were followed five minutes later by a larger fire truck. It was then established that the smoke emanating from the landing gear had been caused by hydraulic fluid dripping onto the aircraft’s brakes. Having just landed, these had been very hot.