DCA21LA120 · Vans Aircraft Inc RV-7
Vans Aircraft Inc RV-7 · Accident: birdstrike en route
From Nampa Municipal Airport (KMAN) to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA21LA120
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Vans Aircraft Inc RV-7
- Aircraft type
- Vans RV-7
- 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
- N137RV
- Operator
- Vans Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nampa Municipal Airport (KMAN), Nampa, IDTo Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC), Broomfield, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2001)
- 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 · descent
- 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
According to the pilot, the flight was one leg of a trip to the Sun 'n Fun aviation event in Florida, at which he would be working in the manufacturer’s company booth. The intended destination was Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC), Broomfield, Colorado. The flight to the eastern Rocky Mountain area was uneventful, and the airplane was in cruise at 13,500 feet for terrain clearance. Shortly after beginning the descent the pilot reported hearing and feeling a loud impact sound and rushing air, immediately followed by a violent and sudden ripping apart of the plexiglass canopy. The pilot reported his headset and glasses were blown off. The pilot reported he initially had difficulty controlling the airplane and reading the instruments, but regained control and successfully made an emergency landing at Boulder Airport (KBDU). Initial inspection of the damage to the canopy indicated a small half-round hole in the side of the canopy. Initially, it was suspected that the damage was possibly caused by a hard body object such as a small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS/drone). However, further examination indicated the hole was consistent with the headset cable location as it was blown free, and no foreign material was found in the airplane. Although no foreign biological material was found, the location and altitude of the event was over remote mountainous terrain, indicating the collision was more likely a bird.
Probable cause
a bird strike.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA21LA120
- Event ID
- 20210415102920
- Case number
- DCA21LA120
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-04-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 70a7d6edd064df0f987ebfdb3498f75b22621b2717d0d77fa1c5bb14492c9160; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:57:13.337Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. KBJC is Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport at Broomfield, Colorado; the narrative for this record explicitly names 'Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC), Broomfield, Colorado', and the airplane diverted to Boulder (KBDU).