SpiceJet plane from Belgavi suffers bird hit; lands safely at Delhi airport
New Delhi, May 9: A SpiceJet plane from Belgavi to Delhi suffered a bird hit on Monday morning and later landed safely at the airport in the national capital.
The Boeing 737-8 MAX aircraft had around 187 passengers onboard, according to an airline official at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) here.
The plane suffered a bird hit at Belgaum airport, an Airports Authority of India (AAI) official said. Specific details were not immediately available.
"On May 9, SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating SG-8472 from Belgavi (Karnataka) to Delhi suffered a bird hit. The aircraft landed safely at Delhi," a SpiceJet spokesperson said in a statement.
It was a Boeing MAX plane, as per the flight tracking website flightradar24.com.
As the plane faced technical glitches, SpiceJet's flight from the national capital to Jharsuguda (Odisha) was delayed by a few hours as it was to be operated with the same aircraft.
The flight to Jharsuguda, which was scheduled to take off at around 11.55 am, departed at about 2 pm and was operated by another aircraft.
However, the airline official at the IGIA told passengers waiting for the flight to Jharsuguda that the delay was due to the plane suffering a bird hit while landing at the airport here.
"The flight was delayed due to technical reasons... The plane (coming from Belgavi) had a bird hit while landing. The engine blade is damaged. The technical team is working on it," SpiceJet Duty Manager at the Delhi airport Akshay Anand told a PTI correspondent who travelled on the flight to Jharsuguda.
Many passengers travelling to Jharsuguda for business purposes faced inconvenience due to the flight delay.
An engineer from a Japanese firm, Hitachi Kayama Masahiro, who is to visit the Steel Authority of India's plant at Rourkela, said, "The flight delay has upset my further travel plans. I have to travel by road for 3 hours from Jharsuguda".
Dalmia Group Tax Manager Rohit Krishna Varshney said, "I am a frequent traveller on this route. Delay in SpiceJet flight on this route is a routine affair. Today it may be due to technical reasons".
Another passenger Varsha Prasad said she has to further travel 2.30 hours from Jharsuguda to Jindal Power Plant at Tamnar, Chhattisgarh.
"The delay will upset my schedule. Since there are no other flights on this route, we have no option but to wait for this flight," she had said at the Delhi airport.
SpiceJet is the only airline that has services on the Delhi-Jharsuguda route. One flight, which was started recently, is operated daily.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
