ANC16FA019 · Cessna 172
70 North Cessna 172 · Accident: birdstrike while maneuvering
From Birchwood Airport (BCV) to Birchwood Airport (BCV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC16FA019
- 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
- 4 · 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 172
- 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
- N63541
- Operator
- 70 North
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Birchwood Airport (BCV), BIRCHWOOD, AKTo Birchwood Airport (BCV), BIRCHWOOD, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was to conduct low-level aerial surveying and photography. A review of Federal Aviation Administration air traffic radar data revealed that the airplane departed the airport in a southerly direction before turning west and then conducted two 360° turns. The airplane then proceeded northeast of the airport for about 4 miles before turning toward the southwest, overflying the intended photography area and continuing past Beach Lake. The airplane then turned east for about 2 miles before the radar track terminated. The airplane was found in a densely wooded area, and a postcrash fire ensued, which consumed a majority of the fuselage.
Examination of the wreckage revealed upward and aft crushing of the leading edge of the left horizontal stabilizer, and no scratching or gouging was found, consistent with an in-flight impact with a soft-bodied object. An examination of a complete feather found near the first pieces of debris and samples of organic material that contained several microscopic feather barbs and barbules taken from the left side of the airplane's fuselage and the tail section revealed that they were consistent with that of a Bald Eagle. Given this evidence, it is likely that the airplane impacted one or more eagles in flight and that the pilot subsequently lost airplane control.
Probable cause
The in-flight collision with one or more large birds (Bald Eagle), which resulted in a loss of airplane control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC16FA019
- Event ID
- 20160421X93349
- Case number
- ANC16FA019
- 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: 5ba0c6028babbf2655e7d9ddbdbaddb88da8ac4974ffbf22aeb26ef02120d0f2; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:44:48.023Z.