'Rare’ bird strike behind Air Asia X emergency landing last July, report reveals

An AirAsia X flight made an emergency landing soon after take-off from the Gold Coast following a suspected “rare” bird strike which caused the plane’s engine to burst into flames, a final report has revealed.

More than 300 passengers were on board flight D7207 on their way to Kuala Lumpur on Monday, July 3.

Taking off at 10.50pm, minutes into the flight the plane began vibrating, passenger Tim Joga said.

“There was a little bit of a shudder," he said.

"I think it was the engine shutting down and starting back up."

After a company pilot travelling as a passenger on board alerted crew of a “starboard fire” which was visible from the cabin, the crew made a MAYDAY call and landed safely at Brisbane Airport at 11.10pm, the final report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said.

The report revealed, the carcass of one bird and “additional debris” of another bird were found by the Gold Coast airport operator along the same runway the D7202 flight had taken off from.

The birds were identified as masked lapwings, commonly known as plovers, which are the third most common bird or bat struck by aircraft between 2006 and 2015.

In the same time period, there were 480 bird strikes reported – about 48 each year.

The investigation into why the engine blew up found, under a UV light inspection, bird remains on a damaged fan blade.

According to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the incident was determined as a “rare scenario”.

“It is extremely unlikely such a scenario would occur on multiple engines simultaneously,” the report stated.