CHI06LA060 · Cessna 310R
Cessna 310R · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From St Charles County Regional Airport/Smartt Field (SET) to Jefferson City Memorial Airport (JEF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06LA060
- 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
- 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
Cessna 310R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N310CK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Charles County Regional Airport/Smartt Field (SET), St. Charles, MOTo Jefferson City Memorial Airport (JEF), Jefferson City, MO
- 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
- Exterior light(s) › Other
- 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 received substantial damage following a bird strike to the airplane's right wing tip tank during cruise flight. Dusk meteorological conditions with an overcast layer of clouds prevailed at the time of the accident. A fire was first noticed by the pilot during an after landing taxi. The pilot evacuated the airplane, and the fire continued to burn for an additional 35 minutes until an explosion occurred. The pilot stated that the bird impacted the top portion of the tip tank and the strobe/navigation assembly within the tip tank was damaged with a broken strobe light bulb. The right tip tank was full of fuel at the time of the bird strike.
Probable cause
The in-flight collision with a duck during cruise flight resulting in a ruptured fuel tank and the strobe/light assembly electrical short resulting in a fire to the right wing tip tank. Contributing factors were the dusk light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06LA060
- Event ID
- 20060113X00070
- Case number
- CHI06LA060
- 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, coordinates. 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: 81510c35727524a0272219b225f8d6ec52790660283a22c0f239fbb41fd76ad9; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:56:08.671Z.