Ryanair Boeing 737 800 incident
Boeing 737 800 · Incident
From Vincenzo Florio Airport Trapani-Birgi (LICT) to Brussels South Charleroi Airport (EBCI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG10WA002
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Boeing 737 800
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- EI-DWD
- Operator
- Ryanair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vincenzo Florio Airport Trapani-Birgi (LICT), Trapani BirgiTo Brussels South Charleroi Airport (EBCI), Brussels
- 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
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
On September 29, 2009 at 8:15 UTC, a Ryanair Boeing 737-800, registration number EI-DWD encountered and struck a flock of birds during takeoff from runway 31L at Trapani Birgi Airport (LICT), Sicily, Italy. The engines ingested some birds causing damage to the fan blades of both engines. The crew performed an air turn back to Trapani Birgi Airport (LICT). An uneventful landing was performed and no injuries to any of the 6 crew and 165 passengers were reported.
The accident is being investigated by the Italian Agenzia Nazionale per la Sicurezza del Volo (ANSV). Further information pertaining to this event may be obtained from:
Agenzia Nazionale per la Sicurezza del Volo Via A. Benigni, 53 00156 Rome Italy
Tel.: 39 068 207 8219 / 39 068 207 8200 Fax: 39 068 273 672
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information obtained for, or released by the Government of Italy.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG10WA002
- Event ID
- 20091028X00540
- Case number
- ENG10WA002
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 48cb6dcd3714c84fab028b03e6dbb9d582f749fdfb3441d2cddc27bd1b87dcc0; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:26:41.688Z.