WPR17FA134 · Jordan John RV7 UNDESIGNAT
Jordan John RV7 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: birdstrike en route
From Buckeye Municipal Airport (BXK) to Buckeye Municipal Airport (BXK)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17FA134
- 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
- 2 · 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
Jordan John RV7 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Jordan John RV7
- 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
- N731RV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buckeye Municipal Airport (BXK), Buckeye, AZTo Buckeye Municipal Airport (BXK), Buckeye, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot and private pilot-rated passenger were in cruise flight when radar contact was lost. Wreckage and impact signatures revealed that the airplane impacted the ground in an inverted, left-wing-down, nose-down attitude. The cockpit canopy, vertical stabilizer, and rudder were found about 1 mile from the main wreckage. Examination of the engine found no abnormalities that would have precluded normal operation.
Examination of the airframe revealed biological matter in a dented section underneath the horizontal stabilizer, as well as bird feathers in the cockpit under the passenger seat. DNA and microscopic examination of the specimens were consistent with a rock pigeon. All fracture surfaces examined were consistent with overstress failure; there were no indications of any preexisting damage such as cracks or corrosion. The fracture surfaces of the spars, skins, stabilizers, and other components from the horizontal stabilizer, vertical stabilizer, and rudder assemblies exhibited features consistent with secondary fractures (such as from ground impact or after the bird strike). There were no clear indications that any of the components that fractured in overstress did so prior to ground impact or independently of the bird strike. It is possible that the pilot made an evasive maneuver before or during impact with the bird, that in combination, resulted in an overstress structural failure of the, vertical stabilizer and rudder, which in turn resulted in the pilot's inability to maintain control of the airplane.
Probable cause
The inflight overstress separation of the vertical stabilizer and rudder during flight which resulted in the pilot's inability to maintain airplane control. Contributing to the accident was an inflight collision with a bird.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17FA134
- Event ID
- 20170627X31135
- Case number
- WPR17FA134
- 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: 932a7a22ed3b3d04a5fa2798d36d13023adc0d62ec998a690115e974c458b947; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:04:49.599Z.