WPR09CA182 · Cessna 172S
Snohomish Flying Service Cessna 172S · Accident: birdstrike on approach
From Harvey Field (S43) to Harvey Field (S43)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA182
- 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 172S
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N4915F
- Operator
- Snohomish Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harvey Field (S43), Snohomish, WATo Harvey Field (S43), Snohomish, WA
- 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
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was returning from the practice area on a supervised solo. He was on the downwind leg for landing at 1,500 feet when he saw a crow rising from below on the airplane's left side. He heard a large thud and felt the airplane buffet. The student pilot looked to verify that no other airplanes were in the vicinity. He checked the elevator and rudder visually and by "crabbing" the airplane using the rudder and adding power; he determined that the airplane was controllable and could be landed safely. Three outboard ribs of the left wing and the spar sustained substantial damage; the top and bottom skins were wrinkled from the leading edge to the spar.
Probable cause
An in-flight collision with a crow.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA182
- Event ID
- 20090406X41140
- Case number
- WPR09CA182
- 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, 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: 635e9fb344131984054fb880814fdfb7deed0b4ab6d4b6ab36baec907e84c831; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:54:27.211Z.