Low on fuel, SOS from pilot to ATC

KOLKATA: The city airport faced two emergency situations with two hours of each other on Thursday after one flight reported low fuel and another was hit by a bird during touchdown.
A Vistara Airlines flight with 144 passengers and seven crew on board had a fright when it ran low on fuel while approaching Kolkata. The flight UK747 took off for Port Blair from Kolkata at 10.38am.On reaching Port Blair, it encountered bad weather, forcing the pilot to turn back due to fuel constraints.
While flights usually carry enough fuel to be able to hover over the destination for at least 30 minutes before turn back and landing safely from the airport or origin, planes flying to Port Blair cannot carry as much fuel due to payload restrictions on landing at the short runway there. Also, the geographic location of the Andaman Islands in the middle of Bay of Bengal means that there are no alternative airports nearby for a flight to divert.
When the plane was on its way back to Kolkata, it encountered more turbulent weather that consumed more fuel. By the time the plane was near Kolkata, fuel was extremely low. Fearing it would run out of fuel if made to wait its turn on arriving at Kolkata, the pilot radioed the ATC and sought emergency landing. Much to the relief of airport authorities, the airline and passengers and crew on board, the plane landed safely at 3.30pm.
Less than two hours later at 5.05pm, the nose of a Spice-Jet aircraft suffered a bird strike while landing at Kolkata airport. The incident occurred on the Dibrugarh-Kolkata flight SG3320. The pland had 75 passengers on board. Following the grounding of the aircraft, the subsequent flight to Varanasi SG3328 was cancelled.