United Airlines Flight 185
Boeing 767-222 · Incident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) to SFR · SAN FRANSISCO, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03IA007
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Boeing 767-222
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N607UA
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), Boston, MATo SFR · SAN FRANSISCO, CA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Object › Bird(s)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Boeing 767 struck three birds during the initial climb out from runway 22. One double-crested cormorant was ingested by the #2 engine, another struck the right wing, and a third bird was found seriously injured on the runway. The airplane returned to the airport and landed uneventfully. Examination revealed damage to the right inboard leading edge slat, landing light, and the #2 engine bypass stator vanes. A review of the airport's Wildlife Hazard Management Plan revealed that on the morning of the incident, two wildlife technicians reported "heavy bird activity" to the control tower. The airport's Automated Terminal Information System (ATIS) was then updated to reflect the hazard, and was still active at the time of the incident. Prior to the airplane's take-off, one of the wildlife plan supervisors reported a flock of birds to the control tower and said they were flying about 200 feet over the approach end of runway 15, moving southbound. A tower controller responded that they had the birds in sight. Shortly thereafter, another airplane departed runway 22 without incident, then the incident airplane took off. A review of air traffic control communications revealed that no specific warning was given by the air traffic controllers to either of the crews, due to the fact that the birds were not in their flight path. It was believed that the flock then split into two or three separate flocks after the other airplane took off, with one of the flocks turning east and directly into the path of the incident airplane.
Probable cause
An inadvertant collision with birds during the initial climb out.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03IA007
- Event ID
- 20030423X00550
- Case number
- IAD03IA007
- 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: f3c8dd4b5154d88758552ecbab3a2ac31c64669d7ce0361531dfe2eaf79ae77d; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:57:36.997Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N607UA; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, UALA.