A Kingfisher aircraft on Friday morning made an emergency landing at Mumbai airport after a bird strike.
The Kingfisher flight IT 331, carrying 120 passengers had taken off Mumbai for Delhi, but it returned to the airport after 15 minutes after a bird hit the aircraft, as a precautionary measure.
All the passengers and crew members were unharmed and were transferred to an alternate aircraft to carry them to Delhi.
BA increasing capacity on Dubai route with extra flight
British Airways (BA) is adding capacity in the Middle East by returning to three daily flights to Dubai from London Heathrow Airport.
The extra flight will be added to BA’s winter schedule. The move shows demand for first and business-class passenger is back following steep decline in March last year where premium cabin occupancy levels were at 30% that caused the airline to halve its daily services into Dubai International Airport from four to two.
"All of the Middle East is growing right now," says Andrew Crawley, director of sales and marketing at BA. "Because of the low base of 2009, it means that everyone will be growing."
BA's Middle East "seat factors", or average occupancy level, was 78%, a figure the company described as encouraging. Airlines often require their aircraft to be two thirds full to break even. BA's announcement of growing traffic last month helped its share price reach a two-year high this week, to 264 pence. The airline's year-to-date passenger traffic is still down more than 7 per cent on the same period last year due to cabin crew strikes and the ash cloud that grounded flights across Europe in April.