WPR10CA077 · Pilatus Britten-Norman BN-2B-26
Inter Island Airways Pilatus Britten-Norman BN-2B-26 · Accident: hard landing
From Pago Pago International Airport (PPG) to Pago Pago International Airport (PPG)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA077
- 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
Pilatus Britten-Norman BN-2B-26
- Aircraft type
- Pilatus Britten Norman BN-2
- 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
- N27BN
- Operator
- Inter Island Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pago Pago International Airport (PPG), Pago Pago, POTo Pago Pago International Airport (PPG), Pago Pago, PO
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was performing a maintenance test flight at an airport located right on the water's edge, on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The pilot stated that as he began the landing flare, several birds flew in front of his windscreen. To avoid hitting the birds, the pilot maneuvered the airplane to the left. The airplane subsequently landed hard on the left main landing gear, just left of the runway centerline. The pilot reported that after touchdown, to avoid running off the runway, he applied right braking action, which resulted in the airplane turning violently to the right and coming to a stop with the nose between 20-30 degrees from runway centerline. Postaccident inspection of the airplane found that the left wing was wrinkled and structurally damaged.
Probable cause
The pilot's action to maneuver the airplane to avoid a collision with a flock of birds while on final approach, resulting in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident were the birds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA077
- Event ID
- 20091210X72650
- Case number
- WPR10CA077
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d9ab3d19924db68883d98721d0da18f2f06de6b84eedf3f78df33ea0e6c04689; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:33:59.728Z.