NTSB CAROL · Event
Event WPR21LA335
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The airplane’s impact with birds during approach.
Factual narrative
The captain and co-pilot reported that, about 1 nm from the final approach fix and about 4,000 ft above the ground, the airplane shuddered. During this time the co-pilot heard multiple loud thuds and realized they had collided with a flock of birds. The flight crew did not detect any unusual flight characteristics for the remainder of the flight and landed without further incident. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the inboard leading edge of the left wing. The flight crew reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).
- — Environmental issues-Physical environment-Object/animal/substance-Animal(s)/bird(s)-Effect on equipment
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2021_WPR21LA335.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
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Related research
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Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type. Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
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