ERA22LA325 · Raytheon Aircraft Company 400A
Aircraft Mgt. Group Raytheon Aircraft Company 400A · Accident: birdstrike during initial climb
From Brunswick Golden Isles Airport (BQK) to Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA325
- 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
Raytheon Aircraft Company 400A
- Aircraft type
- Raytheon 400
- 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
- N400MX
- Operator
- Aircraft Mgt. Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brunswick Golden Isles Airport (BQK), Brunswick, GATo Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT), Pittsburgh, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 15 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
- Initial climb
- 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
The pilot reported that shortly after departure, during their initial climb, he heard a “thump” and suspected a bird strike. The crew did not experience any control issues or anomalous behavior initially but continued to troubleshoot. As they were approaching 10,000 ft mean sea level, they noticed that the cabin altitude was also approaching 10,000 ft, so they leveled off and determined that they had a pressurization problem. After conferring with their flight operations and maintenance department, they notified air traffic control and diverted to a suitable airport and landed safely. Upon subsequent inspection it was revealed that a bird had penetrated the right side of the nose under the first officer’s window. The impact ruptured the fuselage and resulted in substantial airframe damage.
Probable cause
An in-flight collision with a bird.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA325
- Event ID
- 20220720105531
- Case number
- ERA22LA325
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d8cabab20cfa3e7712b4307a6f7edc030efba6f6558b95937c5c7a741af66c4e; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:29:06.512Z.