American Eagle Airlines Embraer EMB 145LR accident
Embraer EMB 145LR · Accident: birdstrike on approach
From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to Springfield, MO
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA15CA108
- 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
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Embraer EMB 145LR
- Aircraft type
- Embraer EMB-145
- 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
- N625AE
- Operator
- American Eagle Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), Chicago, ILTo Springfield, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 1999)
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
On March 19, 2015, about 2015 central standard time, Envoy Air flight 3033, an Embraer 145LR, N625AE, experienced a bird strike while on approach to Springfield-Branson National Airport (SGF), Springfield, Missouri.
According to the operator, the airplane struck a large bird while the flight was at 4,000 feet mean sea level and being vectored to land on runway 2. The flight crew reported no warnings or adverse flight characteristics and subsequently conducted an uneventful landing.
After landing, inspection of the airplane and subsequent maintenance examination revealed substantial damage to the radome, right wing, right horizontal stabilizer and right engine. There were no injuries to the passengers or crew onboard.
Probable cause
an in-flight collision with a bird.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA15CA108
- Event ID
- 20150422X71127
- Case number
- DCA15CA108
- 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 2015-03-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 88ce90fa0a960fd6ee0301c93c08551e1a172d0df3f4eecd058e1944378263bf; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:15:19.402Z.