The crew of an emb-145LR in cruise flight experienced a loud external clunking noise of undetermined...

Narrative:

We were flying a scheduled flight and started to experience a loud clunking noise that seemed to be in the front of the aircraft. Associated with the noise was also a shaking of the aircraft every time we had the noise. We were unsure of what the problem was with no indications from the EICAS. We decided to divert to an airport we were right over the top of. We elected to declare an emergency because we did not know the state of the aircraft or what might have been causing the problem. We landed with no more abnormalities. The threats were that it was completely unexpected. We went from almost no workload up at cruise to a very high workload. Plus using an airport not on our flight plan for a diversion.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: The crew of an EMB-145LR in cruise flight experienced a loud external clunking noise of undetermined origin accompanied by a shaking of the aircraft. An emergency was declared and as a precaution they diverted to a nearby airport.

Narrative: We were flying a scheduled flight and started to experience a loud clunking noise that seemed to be in the front of the aircraft. Associated with the noise was also a shaking of the aircraft every time we had the noise. We were unsure of what the problem was with no indications from the EICAS. We decided to divert to an airport we were right over the top of. We elected to declare an emergency because we did not know the state of the aircraft or what might have been causing the problem. We landed with no more abnormalities. The threats were that it was completely unexpected. We went from almost no workload up at cruise to a very high workload. Plus using an airport not on our flight plan for a diversion.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1090872
Time
Date	201305
Local Time Of Day	0601-1200
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.ARTCC
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	Marginal
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	EMB ERJ 145 ER/LR
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Cruise
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	First Officer Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Events
Anomaly	Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical

The crew of an emb-145LR in cruise flight experienced a loud external clunking noise of undetermined origin accompanied by a shaking of the aircraft. An emergency was declared and as a precaution they diverted to a nearby airport.