A bird strike forced a Turkish Airlines plane bound for Istanbul from Entebbe International Airport back to the airport shortly after take-off Tuesday morning.

Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which is the regulator of the aviation industry in Uganda, said a Turkish Airlines flight number 606 departed Entebbe at 7:30am for Istanbul while it was raining.  Unfortunately, the aircraft experienced a bird strike during take-off.

"As a precautionary measure, the flight hovered in the Ugandan airspace before landing safely at Entebbe at 08:52 am. The aircraft is being checked for airworthiness before resuming the flight," CAA said in a tweet sent out Tuesday morning.

According to UCAA, the flight was later cleared and departed Entebbe International Airport at 10:49am with 281 passengers and crew on board.

Bird strikes and their cost on aviation

A bird strike is a collision between a bird and an aircraft which is in flight or on a take-off or landing roll. The collision can be with the windscreen or the bird is sucked into the engine of jet aircraft.

Bird strikes are a significant threat to flight safety and can lead to human casualties, though they usually don't deal major damage to an aircraft, the collision is fatal for the birds most of the time.

According to simpleflying, bird srikes are estimated to cost commercial airlines worldwide up to $1.2 billion dollars (shillings 4.4 trillion) annually, and $400 million (about shillings 1.4 trillion) in the US alone.