CEN14LA053 · Cessna 525A
Executive Flight Services Cessna 525A · Accident: birdstrike en route
From Lincoln Airport (LNK) to Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (MKC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA053
- 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 525A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 525
- 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
- N368PK
- Operator
- Executive Flight Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lincoln Airport (LNK), Lincoln, NETo Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (MKC), Kansas City, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2010)
- 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 · 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
When the airplane reached an initial altitude of 3,000 feet mean sea level (msl), the departure air traffic controller issued a clearance to 10,000 feet msl and a right turn to about 060 degrees. The flight crew made the right turn and began to climb to 10,000 feet msl. During the climb and after passing about 6,400 feet msl at 200 knots indicated airspeed, the flight crew noted a flock of birds. One of the birds struck the right outboard wing, which resulted in wing spar damage. The airplane returned to the departure airport where it landed without further incident. The airport had a standing notice for bird activity on or in the vicinity of the airport. Further, a medium avian hazard risk existed at the time of the accident for the departure airport area. Although over 90 percent of reported bird strikes occur at or below 3,000 feet above ground level, strikes at higher altitudes are common during migration season. The bird remains were identified as an American White Pelican.
Probable cause
The airplane’s encounter with a flock of American White Pelicans, which resulted in one bird striking the right outboard wing during en route climb from the departure airport.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA053
- Event ID
- 20131114X65953
- Case number
- CEN14LA053
- 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: 28333cf5c3658d4e5eb8c5c25d5b3a752277ea3f70fe9300c5f6485595def686; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:06:52.488Z.