West Air Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: birdstrike on approach
From California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV) to Sacramento International Airport (SMF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA141
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N892FE
- Operator
- West Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV), Arcata, CATo Sacramento International Airport (SMF), Sacramento, CA
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Approach
- 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 was on approach to the airport when he saw five large birds. The pilot felt an impact to the right wing and the airplane rolled to the right. The pilot corrected the roll with opposite aileron and rudder input and the airplane landed safely on the runway. Postaccident examination showed substantial damage to the right wing spar. Bird remains recovered from the airplane were identified as tundra swan.
Probable cause
An in-flight collision with a bird while on final approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA141
- Event ID
- 20100219X33356
- Case number
- WPR10LA141
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-02-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5b866340ef8c3531f4fe98be828e4e23741f5eab69fb07d643c6ed975641d32f; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:41:35.609Z.