Skyway Airlines Beech 1900D accident
Beech 1900D · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR) to General Mitchell International Airport (MKE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA085
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech 1900D
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N148SK
- Operator
- Skyway Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR), Grand Rapids, MITo General Mitchell International Airport (MKE)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight collision with object
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Object › Bird(s)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The crew reported that approximately 24 nautical miles from the flight's destination, at 2,900 feet mean sea level, they encountered a flock of 20 to 30 Canadian geese while the aircraft was flying in a broken cloud layer. The crew stated that one goose impacted the outboard leading edge of the right wing, puncturing a hole through the leading edge and rupturing the fuel tank. The crew stated that the aircraft began to shake and the crew shut down the right engine. The crew declared an emergency with Air Traffic Control and was able to complete the flight to General Mitchell International.
Probable cause
the in-flight collision with a bird.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA085
- Event ID
- 20001205X00131
- Case number
- CHI99LA085
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f9c7f4288917aced544cfff529f767988f520cea2258c950248d731306e74a03; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:59:31.868Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N148SK; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.