ERA26LA142 · Piper PA-28-181
Florida Institute of Technology Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: birdstrike en route
From Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB) to Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA142
- 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
Piper PA-28-181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N658FT
- Operator
- Florida Institute of Technology
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB), Sanford, FLTo Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB), Melbourne, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2024)
- 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 · climb to 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that shortly after departure, while enroute at 1,000 ft mean sea level, she observed a large black bird on their flight path. The flight instructor took positive control of the airplane and attempted a right turn to evade the bird, but the bird impacted the leading edge of the left wing before she could complete the evasive maneuver. The flight instructor continued to fly the airplane, selected the right tank and requested a long landing. She delayed deploying the flaps until immediately over the runway where they landed safely. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the left wing had been substantially damaged.
Probable cause
An in-flight collision with a bird while enroute.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA142
- Event ID
- 20260309202620
- Case number
- ERA26LA142
- 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 local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 819007ef1f71f485ac805e18ca04b5e322cb4626e0040d8110b145903cb8fb36; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:56:43.058Z.