WPR20LA256 · Cessna 172 S
Cessna 172 S · Accident: birdstrike on approach
From Carson Airport (CXP) to Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA256
- 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
- 0
- 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 S
- 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
- N55231
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carson Airport (CXP), Carson City, NVTo Reid-Hillview Airport of Santa Clara County (RHV), San Jose, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2014)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that while in the downwind leg of a traffic pattern, the right wing of the airplane impacted an object. Subsequently, the airplane yawed to the right and lost altitude. The pilot notified the tower and immediately executed a precautionary landing. Postaccident examination of the airplane found damage to the right wing’s leading edge, just outboard of the side strut. The leading edge was crushed aft revealing internal surfaces of the wing structure. Feather fragments were later found on the internal surfaces. A large deceased golden eagle and a small hobby drone were found below the downwind leg traffic area during a search. The hobby drone was mostly undamaged and had signatures indicating that it had been in the area for an extended period of time and was not likely impacted by an airplane. Lab results confirmed the airplane impacted a golden eagle.
Probable cause
The airplane’s collision with a bird while maneuvering in the airport traffic pattern.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA256
- Event ID
- 20200806X33828
- Case number
- WPR20LA256
- 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: 4cb675aace0974822d8132c85e3fc3a25d0deebf5a90c4b5e8773a941c97242d; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:23:37.324Z.