CEN09CA418 · Cessna 550
M & L Airways Cessna 550 · Accident: birdstrike during initial climb
From Clark Regional Airport (JVY) to Greater Portsmouth Regional Airport (PMH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA418
- 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 550
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 550
- 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
- N73HH
- Operator
- M & L Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clark Regional Airport (JVY), Sellersburg, INTo Greater Portsmouth Regional Airport (PMH), Portsmouth, OH
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
The pilot stated that a large bird struck the nose of the airplane during its initial climb. The flight was about 1 mile north of the airport, 1,000 feet above ground level, at the time. The pilot elected to continue the approximately 20-minute flight to the intended destination, and the flight was completed without further incident. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. A postaccident examination revealed impact damage to the nosecone and underlying airframe support structure.
Probable cause
An in-flight collision with a large bird during the airplane's initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA418
- Event ID
- 20090707X53355
- Case number
- CEN09CA418
- 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: f9ce22b8778feb206756c4017e4d963427528fcc71dae6771047ec4fbfe4c858; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:43:50.684Z.