Cape Smythe Air Service Flight 394
Piper PA-31-T3 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Savoonga Airport (PASA) to Gambell Airport (PAGM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA006
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Piper PA-31-T3
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N220CS
- Operator
- Cape Smythe Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Savoonga Airport (PASA), Savoonga, AKTo Gambell Airport (PAGM)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 airline transport certificated pilot was conducting a visual flight rules (VFR) scheduled domestic passenger flight. The airplane was in cruise flight at 2,500 feet msl, at an airspeed of about 200 knots. The pilot said he caught a glimpse of a sea gull that suddenly dove toward the water. The sea gull struck the right wing, outboard of the right engine nacelle. The pilot landed the airplane without any problems. The right wing's leading edge upper surface received downward and aft crushing of the wing structure about 18 inches across, and about 8 inches deep. The damage to the wing included several ribs, forward spar, leading edge skin, and the deice boot.
Probable cause
An in-flight collision with a bird.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA006
- Event ID
- 20001212X19898
- Case number
- ANC00LA006
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-10-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d6d6f3f503a82d041f7b621032236a4260575f9fe66e8d4f8cb19c45576b131d; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:51:56.670Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N220CS; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, CSAA.