ATL97LA102 · Piper PA-38-112
Raleigh Flying Service Piper PA-38-112 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during takeoff
From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA102
- 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-38-112
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-38
- 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
- N2600N
- Operator
- Raleigh Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), RALEIGH-DURHAM, NCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Takeoff
- First occurrenceThe 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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
- Object › Animal(s)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructor reported that he was giving instruction to a pre-solo student pilot, and while conducting the last touch-and-go, the airplane struck a deer. The student was at the controls at the time of the accident, which was at dusk. The instructor stated he did not see the deer. He felt a bump, but thought the airplane had hit a pot hole, until the student informed that they had hit a deer. The student continued the rotation after impact, then the instructor took the controls. The instructor planned to land immediately to inspect the damage, but the deer was still on the runway. He then elected to return to the home airport, where emergency personnel were available, since he was uncertain of the condition of the landing gear. The landing ended without incident. During the occurrence, the left wing, left flap, and main spar were damaged.
Probable cause
an animal (deer) on the runway. Factors associated with the accident were: the light condition at dusk, and failure or inability of the flight crew to see the deer in time to avoid a collision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA102
- Event ID
- 20001208X08066
- Case number
- ATL97LA102
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-07-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d583962ea41719dbd02c09b5a5f39474bf6827a37c831320187a7b8fc6acdc8a; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:19:13.010Z.