CEN09CA151 · Schweizer Aircraft Corp G-164B
Dons Air Service Schweizer Aircraft Corp G-164B · Accident: birdstrike on approach
From Ferriday, LA (private airstrip) to Ferriday, LA (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA151
- 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
Schweizer Aircraft Corp G-164B
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer G-164
- 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
- N3628T
- Operator
- Dons Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ferriday, LA (private airstrip)To Ferriday, LA (private airstrip)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 final
- Defining eventThe 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
- Birdstrike
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on short final, the bi-wing airplane impacted a flock of birds. Bird residue penetrated the windscreen and impacted the pilot in the face. Temporarily blinded, the pilot attempted a go-around maneuver, but the airplane impacted the runway, nosed over, and came to rest in an inverted position. The airplane's fuselage sustained structural damage during the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control following an impact with birds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA151
- Event ID
- 20090204X65300
- Case number
- CEN09CA151
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 946b7a04e243d4e6f80f8ba6de473ead8ebd54e7f253c2b82c752da26636372d; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:43:55.116Z.