Bird Strike Plane Crashes: What Happens, Who May Be Responsible, and What Injured Passengers and Families Face

Is a Bird Strike Just Bad Luck? When One Can Bring Down an Aircraft

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) uses the term wildlife strike for any collision between an aircraft and a bird or other wildlife. A bird strike is the most familiar kind. The FAA collects reports of these events in its Wildlife Strike Database, the main federal source of information about how often strikes are reported, at what phase of flight and with what result.

Strikes tend to matter most at low altitude, during takeoff, initial climb, approach and landing, when aircraft and birds share the same airspace near the ground. Those are also the moments when an aircraft has the least height and speed to work with if something goes wrong.

A bird is small, but at aircraft speeds even a small mass hits with great force. The most dangerous scenario is engine ingestion, where a bird is pulled into a turning engine. A strike on a windshield or on the airframe, such as a wing, tail or nose, is generally less likely to bring down a large aircraft but capable of serious harm on smaller ones.

Most bird strikes do not cause accidents. Many leave a dent or nothing at all. A smaller group cause serious damage, and some lead to the loss of the aircraft. Airports operate within an FAA framework for wildlife hazards, discussed below. For a family, the point is that a bird strike is a recognized, regulated hazard, which is why the law asks questions about it rather than treating it as nothing more than chance.

How a Bird Strike Leads to an Accident: The Failure Chain

The typical failure chain begins with ingestion. A bird drawn into a jet engine can damage the blades and disrupt airflow, causing a compressor stall (a breakdown of the smooth airflow the engine needs) or a flameout (the engine's combustion goes out). Either can reduce or eliminate thrust. From there, the crew has a short window to respond: restart, continue on remaining power, turn back, or make a forced landing.

How that window plays out depends on factors beyond the strike itself. A single-engine aircraft has no redundancy: if its only engine loses power, the aircraft is coming down, and the question becomes where and how. A multi-engine aircraft may be able to keep flying on its remaining engines, unless more than one engine is affected. Altitude and airspeed at the moment of the strike shape survivability, because they decide how much time and distance the crew has. Crew training and nearness to a suitable runway matter too.

Windshield strikes follow a separate path. On smaller aircraft, a bird can come through the windshield and injure the pilot or passengers. Transport-category airplanes, the large aircraft used in airline service, are built to FAA airworthiness standards that address bird-strike resistance. A strike to the airframe can also damage control surfaces or structure.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is the independent federal agency that investigates aviation accidents. Its investigation usually produces a preliminary report (an early account of facts, not a conclusion) and later a final report that may state a probable cause, the agency's own conclusion about why the accident happened. Federal law bars that report from a civil damages case, as explained below.

If you are trying to understand what went wrong, each link in this chain points to different people's conduct: the airport near the strike, the crew and operator who responded, and the companies that designed and built the engine and airframe.

Could Anyone Have Prevented It? Airports, Airlines, and Aircraft Manufacturers the Law May Look At

If you are asking whether someone could have prevented the accident, three groups usually come into view.

The airport is often the first question. Airports certificated under the FAA's airport certification rules operate under requirements that include wildlife hazard assessments and wildlife hazard management plans where they apply. For an injured passenger or family, that means the law may ask whether a required assessment or plan existed at the airport where the strike happened, and whether it was followed.

Air carriers and charter operators come next. A charter (Part 135) operator is a company that flies passengers or cargo for hire on demand rather than on an airline schedule. Both airlines and charter operators carry obligations about crew training and keeping aircraft airworthy, and their training, dispatch and maintenance decisions may be examined. Our related page on the skydiving plane crashes topic shows how operator type changes the picture in another setting.

The companies that built the aircraft are the third group. If you are wondering whether the engine or airframe should have withstood the strike, the relevant standards are federal: engines are type-certificated under the FAA's airworthiness standards for aircraft engines, which address bird ingestion, and airframes for transport-category airplanes fall under the FAA's transport-category airworthiness standards.

None of this makes anyone liable just because a strike happened. Negligence, the legal term for failing to use reasonable care, asks four things: whether a duty existed, whether it was breached, whether that breach caused the accident, and whether damages resulted. Whether each element is met depends on the facts of the specific accident.

Product liability is a separate theory. It asks whether an engine or airframe component had a design or manufacturing defect that caused the harm, and it is distinct from negligence. Federal regulations set safety standards, but state tort law governs most civil claims, and fault rules and damages rules differ from state to state. For someone weighing a claim, this means which parties are examined, and under which state's rules, shapes what losses may be recoverable.

Why the NTSB Investigation Shapes — But Does Not Decide — a Civil Case

When families learn about this federal rule, many wonder whether a civil case is even possible. It is. The NTSB's report is kept out of court, but the case itself goes on.

The rule appears in 49 U.S.C. § 1154. Subsection (b) states: "No part of a report of the Board, related to an accident or an investigation of an accident, may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report."

In practical terms, the NTSB's probable cause is the agency's conclusion, made for safety purposes. It is not a court's finding of liability, and it cannot stand in for one. A civil case proceeds on its own evidentiary record: the parties gather the physical evidence, documents and testimony themselves and present them to the court.

The same section places specific limits on cockpit recordings. Under subsection (a), a party generally may not use discovery, the pretrial process for obtaining evidence, to obtain a cockpit recorder recording, or parts of a transcript or still images the NTSB has not made public. A court may allow it after a private (in camera) review if it decides the public material is not enough for a fair trial and more is necessary, and then it must issue a protective order limiting use to the case.

A preliminary report is not a probable cause finding. Until the NTSB issues its final report, the investigation is ongoing, and no one, including the agency, has stated why the accident happened.

Many families find it hard to see how the factual record and the legal theories connect. If you would like to talk through what the investigation's status means for a claim, you can request a case evaluation.

Injuries a Bird Strike Accident Can Cause

The injuries in these accidents usually come from what follows the strike: an abrupt forced landing or a crash. Blunt-force trauma from impact is common. Crash forces can cause spinal and orthopedic injuries, and traumatic brain injury can follow from the head striking the cabin or seat structure. Some accidents are fatal.

Post-crash fire is a separate mechanism. When fuel ignites after impact, people who survived the impact can suffer burns and smoke inhalation. Our page on plane crash burn injuries covers that subject in more depth.

Severity tends to depend on the phase of flight, whether the forced landing was on a runway or off the airport, and the aircraft type. A survivor's recovery can stretch over months or years, which is why the longer view on plane crash survivor injuries may also be useful.

The law names categories of damages that may be allowed where a claim is proven: medical expenses, past and future; lost income and lost earning capacity; and pain and suffering. Which of these apply, and how they are measured, depends on the facts and on the state's law.

Wrongful death is a claim brought by certain family members or an estate when a person dies because of another's wrongful conduct. Most states have wrongful death statutes, and who may bring the claim and which damages are recoverable differ by state. None of these categories says anything about whether a particular person has a claim or what it would involve.

What Can Show What Happened: Evidence in a Bird-Strike Accident Investigation

If you are wondering how anyone will know what happened in those seconds, the answer usually starts with two devices. The flight data recorder (FDR) logs the aircraft's performance, and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captures sounds and voices in the cockpit, subject to the federal limits described above. Together they can show when the strike happened, how the engines responded and what the crew did.

Maintenance records matter as well, including records of compliance with airworthiness directives, the FAA's mandatory safety orders for aircraft and parts. So do the airport's wildlife hazard management plan and its records of wildlife control activity.

The FAA Wildlife Strike Database holds reports filed voluntarily by pilots, airlines, airports and others. Reports for a particular airport can help show what was known about wildlife there.

Physical evidence often tells the most. The wreckage, the engine components and the biological remains of the bird can help identify the species and whether a flock was involved. Some physical evidence does not stay in the same condition indefinitely, which is why preservation is a practical reality in these cases.

If you were hurt, the records that usually matter on the damages side include medical records, imaging and treatment records, which form the foundation of any damages claim. Injured people and families also often keep tickets or booking records, photos, any belongings from the flight, and the names of other passengers or witnesses. Evidence that is lost or changes condition can weaken the record a claim rests on. For a broader look at how these pieces come together, see our page on the plane crash lawsuit process.

Limitation Periods and Why the Applicable State's Rules Govern

A missed filing deadline can end a claim before anyone looks at whether it had merit. That is the stake for an injured person or a grieving family.

The statute of limitations is the time within which a civil claim must be filed. For most bird-strike claims, it is set by state law, and it differs by state. When the period starts to run also varies by state and by type of claim: it may run from the date of the accident, from a death, or from another triggering event the state's law names. Some states recognize exceptions, such as rules for minors or a discovery rule for harms not known right away, but these vary and do not exist everywhere. There is no single national rule.

Federal law adds a separate layer for some deaths. The Death on the High Seas Act, which begins at 46 U.S.C. § 30301, is the federal law addressing deaths that occur on the high seas, including some over-water aviation accidents. When it applies, its own terms govern who may bring a claim, what damages are available and the time limits, rather than a state's wrongful death statute.

Because the deadline depends on the state, the type of claim and where the death or injury occurred, families are often unsure which rules even apply. A conversation with our attorney can cover where the flight was, where it ended, and the dates involved.