Delta Air Lines Flight 2295
Airbus A320 211 · Accident: birdstrike en route
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Eppley Airfield (OMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA23LA067
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Airbus A320 211
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A320
- 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
- N330NW
- Operator
- Delta Air Lines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GATo Eppley Airfield (OMA), Omaha, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1992)
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
Delta Air Lines flight 2295 struck several birds while descending through 13,000 feet on approach to Eppley Airfield (OMA), Omaha, Nebraska. The bird strike occurred about 34 miles southeast of the airport, near Red Oak, Iowa, at an airspeed of 290 knots. The crew continued the approach and made a normal landing. Weather at the time of the event was night visual conditions.
Birds struck the airplane and punctured the fuselage skin in two locations on the left side; one above the cockpit windows and another near the pitot tube (see figure 1). Another bird punctured the skin on the right side of the fuselage below the cockpit window. Damage was evident to the stringers and frames at each location, and the size of the punctures in total exceeded the size of the outflow valve. The damage adversely affected the structural strength and pressurization performance and required a major repair.
Figure 1. Photo of two of the bird strikes on the left side of the airplane, indicated by blue circles. (Source: Delta Air Lines)
The flight crew described the noise as the strike occurred as being like an “explosion.” The cabin depressurized, and the cockpit door blew open. The captain reported that the wind noise was “extreme” which made communication difficult. Soon after the strike the airplane descended though 10,000 ft and the cabin altitude matched the airplane altitude at about 9,500 ft. The crew declared an emergency, continued the approach to OMA, and landed uneventfully.
The species of birds was identified as either Snow Goose or Ross’s Goose (DNA testing could not discriminate between the two) by the Smithsonian Institution Feather Identification Laboratory. According to the FAA, there were no pilot reports of bird activity in the area near the time of the accident.
Probable cause
Multiple bird strikes during descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA23LA067
- Event ID
- 20221121106329
- Case number
- DCA23LA067
- 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: 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 2022-11-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0b78efa90198416695d214a23cf3604c96fb19b1a85c641cb02f4a071ab13ed9; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:24:55.271Z.