DEN01LA073 · Cessna 340
Cessna 340 · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC) to Alamosa, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN01LA073
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Cessna 340
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 340
- 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
- N9940F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC), Cedar City, UTTo Alamosa, CO
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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 · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he had just passed over the airport at 9500 feet mean sea level and entered the downwind leg for the approach to runway 20. At that moment he encountered a flock of large birds that flew up from below. One bird struck the leading edge of the right wing at approximately 3 feet inboard of the tip tank. The pilot declared an emergency and landed without further incident. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing's leading edge, skin, wing spar and auxiliary fuel cells. At the time of the accident, winds were light and variable at 3 knots. The bird was identified as an adult sand hill crane.
Probable cause
The in-flight collision with a large bird during downwind approach for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN01LA073
- Event ID
- 20010323X00643
- Case number
- DEN01LA073
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- 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: 98be42dc51295910145a88decb06e6b1290fb7a524761d8d54ce1a30ac2c3489; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:05:35.861Z.