African airline reports drone collision with Boeing 737-700

With 86 people aboard, a Boeing 737-700 collided with a drone while approaching the airport in Tete, Mozambique. “The crew heard a crash, which alerted the possibility that the aircraft had contact with an external body,” Linhas Aereas de Mozambique reported on its Facebook page.

Fortunately, the pilots could land the plane safely without any injuries.

The LAM crew initially thought the plane hit a bird, but found numerous gashes in the right side of the nose after landing, suggesting a collision with a more substantial object. Pictures on social media showed gouges in the plane’s nose cone, where important electronics are located.

Mozambique’s Institute of Civil Aviation is investigating the incident. If the object that struck the jet is confirmed as a drone, the incident would be one of the first worldwide where a remote-controlled aircraft collided with a passenger airliner.

Regulators in the U.S. and around the world have spent years devising flight rules for drones because of concerns that a collision could knock out an airliner's engine or cause other significant damage, as has happened with bird strikes.

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