ERA21LA047 · American Legend AL3
American Legend AL3 · Accident: birdstrike en route
From Pitt-Greenville Airport (PGV) to DSN · Winterville, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA047
- 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
American Legend AL3
- Aircraft type
- American Legend AL3
- 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
- N30BX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pitt-Greenville Airport (PGV), Greenville, NCTo DSN · Winterville, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2007)
- 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 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 he and his friend, who is also a flight instructor, were performing touch-and-go landings at different airports. After his last touch-and-go, and during climb out, he saw some turkey buzzards flying above the airplane. He decided to turn to the right to avoid the birds but one of the buzzards hit the propeller and the airplane started to violently shake. The flight instructor, seated in the rear seat, shut off the engine and took over control of the airplane. The flight instructor then located a field to land in. They landed with a tailwind and during the landing roll, they were getting close to some trees at the end of the field. The pilot was not sure if he depressed the brakes or the flight instructor did, or they both did, but the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted about 40 feet away from the trees, resulting in substantial damage to the rudder and wings.
Probable cause
The airplane’s collision with a bird during initial climb, which resulted in a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA047
- Event ID
- 20201120102311
- Case number
- ERA21LA047
- 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, cause areas. 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: 1556e3c65e51bf48f85c95fdc44bf52a82f3c574ce5e5da999e83e1b9bcd9d89; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:24:27.112Z.