CEN09IA481 · Raytheon Aircraft Company BE-400A
Comtran International Raytheon Aircraft Company BE-400A · Incident: birdstrike during takeoff
From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR) to Lakefront Airport (NEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09IA481
- 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
- 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
Raytheon Aircraft Company BE-400A
- Aircraft type
- Raytheon BE-400
- 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
- N679SJ
- Operator
- Comtran International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR), Sugar Land, TXTo Lakefront Airport (NEW), New Orleans Lak, LA
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was on departure roll approaching 95 knots when one large and two smaller birds were observed flying across the plane’s flight path from left to right. The pilots were unable to react before at least one of the birds struck the airplane. The pilot stated that the right engine immediately lost all power and the crew subsequently rejected the takeoff. Postflight examination of the airplane revealed that all but one of the right engine’s fan blades were fractured and the inlet duct had separated from the front of the engine and was hanging by a bleed air duct. Bird remains from a 1 ½- to 2-pound juvenile yellow-crowned night heron were found on the runway and in the right engine. Examination of the engine revealed that the engine spinner had separated from the engine due to the bird strike and entered the engine, resulting in the liberation of the fan blades and subsequent failure of the engine. The engine was certified to ingest a four-pound goose. However, the certification requirements in place at the time did not require the spinner to be tested during the certification process. The certification requirements were later updated to require testing of the spinner.
Probable cause
The failure of the spinner following an unavoidable bird strike. Contributing to the incident were the inadequate engine bird strike certification requirements in place at the time the engine was certified.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09IA481
- Event ID
- 20090731X35715
- Case number
- CEN09IA481
- 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: 4d4a962dcbb2acc050be584a05fea8f2ec08c2aba0e5af8712c72e38611509e4; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:06:13.778Z.