Allegheny Airlines de Havilland DHC-8-102 accident
de Havilland DHC-8-102 · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to Albany International Airport (ALB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA004
- 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
- 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
de Havilland DHC-8-102
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-8
- 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
- N847EX
- Operator
- Allegheny Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Washington, DCTo Albany International Airport (ALB), Albany, NY
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was descending through 4,000 feet msl, at 200 KIAS, on a dark night, in visual meteorological conditions, when the airport's approach lights illuminated a flock of birds ahead of them. The auto-pilot was disconnected, but there was insufficient time to avoid contact with multiple birds. The airplane was checked for controllability, and no problems were noted, after which a normal landing was made. An after landing inspection revealed bird strikes on the base of the vertical stabilizer, and the about 6 feet outboard of the engine on the right wing. The right wing fuel tank was penetrated, and fuel was observed leaking from the right wing.
Probable cause
An in-flight collision with birds. A factor was the night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA004
- Event ID
- 20021029X05398
- Case number
- NYC03LA004
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-10-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d30a30cfbfeec872de08a8a1a25ac6d83d306222a10dbc029a20372d2008bb00; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:57:44.423Z.