CEN14CA095 · Cessna 182N N
Cessna 182N N · Accident: birdstrike en route
From St Charles Airport (LS40) to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA095
- 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 182N N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N491CC
- Operator
- Will R. DuFrene, Jr · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From St Charles Airport (LS40), AMA, LATo Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), Bayou Gauche, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1971)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying over a bayou canal when a large bird contacted the leading edge of the right wing. He stated he immediately felt a vibration in the control yoke, and had to apply left aileron and left rudder to keep the airplane from rolling to the right. The pilot assessed the aircraft's control capability and decided to return to his departure airport. As he approached the airport, the pilot extended 10 degrees of flaps and slowed the airspeed to 120 mph, still applying left aileron and rudder. While on final approach, as the airspeed reached 90 to 100 mph, the right wing dropped and the airplane rolled between 45 and 90 degrees to the right. The pilot added full power, retracted the flaps, and applied full left aileron and left rudder. The airplane descended to an altitude of 100 feet before the pilot was able to level the wings and begin a climb. The pilot decided to land at the larger nearby airport so that he would have a longer runway and could land at a higher than normal airspeed. The pilot landed the airplane without further incident. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the airplane sustained substantial damage to the leading edge of the right wing.
Probable cause
The collision with a bird which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA095
- Event ID
- 20131230X25135
- Case number
- CEN14CA095
- 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: d46e5341599cf83262595aebea5b478ab9b67beadb8c607b8a64c9f0458196f5; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:13:04.033Z.