The damaged right engine of FedEx Flight 3609 after the airplane hit a flock of birds upon takeoff at Newark Liberty International Airport in March. Derick Nicholas, a Bargersville resident and pilot for FedEx, was piloting the plane during the incident, and landed it safely without any loss of life or damage to the cargo.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
By Ryan Trares | Daily Journal
rtrares@dailyjournal.net
For the Republic
BARGERSVILLE — The voice in the recording was direct and matter-of-fact.
“FedEx 3609 just hit a bird, we’re declaring an emergency. Returning to airfield.”
On board, Capt. Dave Zehr was behind those words, spoken as First Officer Derick Nicholas was piloting a Boeing 767-300F on the morning of March 1. The airplane had just taken off from Newark Liberty International Airport when, just a few hundred feet off the ground, it struck five or six Canadian geese.
Video and photographs from the ground show the plane’s right engine engulfed in flame. But following his training, and with the quick thinking from the Newark air traffic control, Nicholas was able to land the aircraft.
Nicholas’ decisive actions prevented a tragedy, as he landed the Boeing 767 safely without any loss of life or damage to the cargo. For his coolheadedness and stellar flying, he and Zehr were awarded the CEO Air Safety Award from FedEx.
“If you lose an engine right at take-off, that’s maybe the hardest thing you can do. So we were doing the hardest thing you could do in an airplane,” the Bargersville resident said.
Nicholas has been employed as a pilot for 20 years, including the past 10 for FedEx. The Columbus native still remembers the point where he fell in love with flying. When he was around 12 years old, he took his first flight during a family vacation to Disney World.
“I liked roller coasters, I sat by the window, and I said, ‘This is awesome.’ I was a realist — I realized that if someone would pay me to do this, I was sold, right then,” he said.
Nicholas earned his bachelor’s degree from Indiana State University, earning a private pilot certificate, an instrument rating, a commercial rating and a certified flight instructor rating, among other education.
Once he had earned more than 1,500 hours of flying, he could start applying to airlines. Nicholas had his start at a regional airline, flying passengers for about 10 years and now flying cargo with FedEx for another 10.
“I love my job. I have the best view of any office — I just crossed the Atlantic yesterday, looked at Greenland, I see the sunrise and sunset,” he said. “I fly a $250 million machine from continent to continent at 500 miles per hour. To me, that’s awesome.”
Nicholas’s wealth of experience served him well on the morning of March 1 in New Jersey. He had arrived from Paris, France, to Newark two days prior. After a 48-hour layover, he and his fellow crew — Zehr and another aviator — were set to fly in the morning to Indianapolis, with Nicholas flying the plane.
According to the Aviation Investigation Preliminary Report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board, Flight 3609 had just taken off when Nicholas spotted three white birds to the left and underneath the airplane.
“He called ‘Birds!’ and immediately thereafter heard an ‘abrupt bang’ and the airplane experienced moderate to severe vibrations,” the report states.
Nicholas started a right turn to head back to the Newark airport, advising air traffic control that they needed to make the emergency landing.
According to the aviation report, the crew checked the engine indicators, which displayed damage to the right engine, including indications of a fire. They shut down the engine while discharging one fire bottle — an extinguishing system inside the engine.
“I was just trying to keep the plane flying. The first rule you ever hear from doing small planes until now is ‘Aviate, navigate, communicate.’ So that means, aviate — fly the plane, keep it above ground,” Nicholas said.
All three members of the flight crew acted quickly, running through the checklists created for incidents such as this.
Though the airplane flew much more smoothly after the engine was shut down, indications of a fire persisted for the rest of the flight, according to the aviation report.
Communication was constant between Nicholas and air traffic control. By working together, Flight 3609 landed on the same runway they had left from 8 minutes and 45 seconds before.
“Thank you, great job,” Nicholas can be heard saying to air traffic control in the audio from the incident.
The flight crew shut down the left engine once on the ground, and contacted the aircraft rescue and firefighting responders at the airport because the right engine was still on fire, the aviation report said.
The engine fire was doused with water by responders, and after receiving the all-clear, Nicholas and the crew exited the airplane.
“Were we scared? No, you weren’t scared — you went into training mode. I will say this, my adrenaline was very, very up,” he said. “The moment you touch ground and come to a stop, it’s kind of a high-five moment, even if you have a lot of work to do. But it was still a relief.”
Hours of interviews, discussions and breakdowns followed with FedEx and federal officials. Being so close to New York City, the incident received considerable media coverage, with dramatic video and photographs of the airplane on fire widely published. Nicholas was moved to another hotel, changing out of his uniform to avoid media attention.
All the while, his thoughts were with his family — wife Nikki, and daughters Sophia, 14, and Olivia, 10.
“It hit them a little worse. They saw it on TV. When you see the videos of that right-bank turn, she said it looks like we were crashing,” Nicholas said.
The excitement and adrenaline of March 1 have long faded, as he’s returned to his normal routine flying between Europe and the United States for FedEx.
In August, Nicholas learned he and Zehr would be honored by FedEx. The CEO Air Safety Awards were given to a wide number of recipients throughout the company during an annual event held in Memphis, Tennessee, in September. He and Nikki Nicholas traveled to the event where he was presented with the crystalline award.
Inside his Bargersville home, Nicholas has put the award up in his study. While he’s proud of the actions he took to land the Boeing in March, he also fully recognizes that many different people came together to ensure the flight made it ground safely.
“This was a big event,” he said.
