Delta Air Lines Flight 338
Boeing 757 · Accident: in flight collision with object during takeoff
From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA064
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 757
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 757
- 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
- N682DA
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), KYTo Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Washington, DC
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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 · Estimated position: the centre of Covington, KY, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane pushed back from the gate, and taxied to runway 18L. While taxing, the crew heard no mention of a bird hazard by another aircraft or air traffic control. The takeoff roll was normal until passing approximately 150 knots; at that point, a flock of birds traveling from left to right passed in front of the airplane. The captain advised the first officer of the hazard, and asked him to climb over the flock. The first officer increased pitch angle, but the airplane still penetrated the flock. At the time of penetration, the nose wheel was in the air, and the main landing gear was just becoming airborne. The airplane returned to the airport without further incident. At the time of impact, N1 on the left engine dropped from 81.88 percent to 56.00 percent, and on the right engine, it dropped from 81.25 to 71.63 percent. In both cases, throttle positions remained constant. The bird's roost was not identified, and no airport procedures contributing to the accident were observed. Starlings comprised 5 percent of all the damaging animal strikes to U.S. aircraft from 1993 to 1995.
Probable cause
A flock birds were ingested into both engines, resulting in substantial damage to the engines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA064
- Event ID
- 20001205X00234
- Case number
- NYC99LA064
- 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: 6b1464482cdca45e4d9f566a18e9d35ebc60ebebdf237d85af8938226bdfd13b; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:59:05.392Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N682DA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.