Delta Air Lines Flight 1232
McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30 · Accident: birdstrike en route
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX) to Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA044
- 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
- Airline
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-90
- 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
- N909DA
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), Phoenix, AZTo Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UT
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 flight crew reported that during climb to cruise they heard a loud bang, followed by a "pop" in the pressurization and loud noise within the cockpit. The first officer stated that prior to the loud bang he observed "several black dots" directly in front of him. The flight crew declared an emergency and diverted to their departure airport, where they landed uneventfully. Examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed an approximately 18 inch by 21 inch tear in fuselage skin located aft of the right side flight deck eyebrow window and structural damage to the upper portion of the fuselage. Bird residue and feathers were observed near the torn area of fuselage skin. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Feather Identification Laboratory performed DNA analysis, microscopic examination, and whole feather comparisons with museum study skins on the recovered residue and feathers. The analysis identified the residue and feathers as the remains of a Western Grebe (Aechmophorus occidentalis). The weight range for the species complex is recorded from 906 to 1,429 grams, with an average weight of 3.3 pounds.
Probable cause
An in-flight collision with birds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA044
- Event ID
- 20091102X82140
- Case number
- WPR10LA044
- 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: 89d25e7d526c7565ba303c625925cbf3c402f0df239acd57dc85a35c497babbd; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:27:49.118Z.