ERA14CA001 · Cessna 172P P
Aerosim Academy Cessna 172P P · Accident: birdstrike en route
From Merritt Island Airport (COI) to Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA001
- 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
Cessna 172P P
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N65704
- Operator
- Aerosim Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merritt Island Airport (COI), Merritt Island, FLTo Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB), Sanford, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1982)
- 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
- En route · 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that, while in cruise flight at an altitude of 2,500 feet, he observed two large birds directly ahead of the airplane. He assumed control of the airplane from the student pilot and attempted to maneuver around them, but one of the birds impacted the left wing, resulting in substantial damage. After observing no flight control anomalies, the flight instructor elected to continue to the destination airport, where he landed the airplane without incident.
Probable cause
An inflight collision with a bird during cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA001
- Event ID
- 20131017X35620
- Case number
- ERA14CA001
- 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, coordinates. 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: 7109f22c15ab0af473c250e1cb50b6a0cb1daa11729548a61db0d5399b2dc915; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:58:36.390Z.