On May 19, 2025, a Turkish Airlines flight departing Dhaka became an unwitting gladiator in an avian coliseum. Seconds after takeoff, a black kite -- a scavenger with a wingspan rivalling a child’s height -- slammed into its engine, igniting a fireball visible from the tarmac.
The Airbus A330, carrying 280 souls, executed a heart-stopping U-turn, skidding back to Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) like a chastened dog on a leash. This was no isolated skirmish. For years, Bangladesh’s skies have hosted a silent war between steel and featherweight insurgents. The birds, it seems, are winning.
Dhaka’s skies belong to the Milvus migrans -- the black kite. These raptors, with their Hitchcockian swarms, aren’t mere pests. They’re organized crime. Attracted to the airport’s all-you-can-eat buffet of insects, garbage, and warm tarmac, they’ve turned it into an avian Times Square.
Just beyond the runway, a wasteland of open landfills and butcher shops leaks scraps into murky ponds. Grasshoppers dance in overgrown grass, while monsoon rains turn the area into a kite rave. “It’s like setting up a McDonald’s next to a gym and wondering why everyone’s obese,” quipped a researcher who led a study on these birds.
The kites aren’t solo artists. They’re backed by an ecosystem of enablers: Unregulated slaughterhouses and trash piles ringing the airport, the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh’s(CAAB) lethargic oversight that treats bird strikes like minor accounting errors, and Dhaka’s humidity, which turns aircraft engines into bird smoothie blenders.
Biman Bangladesh Airlines -- the national flag carrier -- has become the birds’ favourite punching bag. Between 2022 and 2024, avian kamikaze attacks cost the airline Tk 28.46 crore ($2.7 million) in direct losses. That’s enough to buy 1.8 million biryani plates or fund a mid-sized political rally.
Among the casualties was a Biman Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, a $250 million marvel of engineering, grounded in May 2025 after a kite turned its engine into a bird shredder. Engineers spent days picking feather confetti from its turbines.
Then there’s the 737 Shuffle -- a Dhaka-Bangkok flight in 2023 that aborted takeoff when a bird burst its tire, leaving passengers stranded on the taxiway with deflated vacation dreams. And let’s not forget the day when both Biman and Fly Dubai flights aborted takeoffs on the same chaotic day, turning the airport apron into an avian crime scene. Biman’s CEO, Shafiqur Rahman, reportedly begged CAAB for help, but his letters might as well be paper airplanes tossed into a cyclone.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) has responded to this aerial insurgency with the urgency of a sloth on melatonin. Their anti-bird arsenal includes marksmen who blast blanks at kites like extras in a spaghetti Western, gas cannons that startle birds until they realize it’s just noise, and endless workshops where officials nod gravely and declare, “We must remove garbage!” -- all while landfills metastasize outside.
At a CAAB safety workshop, airline executives shared grim stats: HSIA’s bird strike rate (1.73 per 1,000 flights) triples the global average. “It’s like Dhaka’s birds have a frequent flier program,” joked an aviation safety professional. CAAB Chairman Monjur Kabir Bhuiyan insists they’re trying. His solution? “Remove the garbage!” Never mind that Dhaka’s waste management operates on the same principles as a toddler’s snack time.
The birds aren’t the villains here. They’re refugees in a habitat humans wrecked. Every kite colliding with a Dreamliner is a feathered protest sign. Meanwhile, Biman -- already drowning in $1.3bn debt -- bleeds cash repairing engines, while CAAB scribbles “action plans” on cocktail napkins.
The solution isn’t complicated: Starve the kites by sealing landfills and regulating slaughterhouses, upgrade tech with advanced radar systems like Japan’s bird-tracking networks, and hire some ecologists who understand ecosystems aren’t spreadsheet cells.
Until then, Bangladesh’s skies will remain a Darwinian theatre where birds and Boeing duel -- and governance is the perennial loser.
Zakir Kibria is a writer and nicotine fugitive (once pickled a ghost pepper in bourbon for three years “to test colonialism’s hangover.”). Entrepreneur | Chronicler of Entropy | Cognitive Dissident. Chasing next caffeine fix, immersive auditory haze, free falls. Collector of glances. “Some desires defy gravity.” Email: [email protected].
