West Bend Air Learjet 35A accident
Learjet 35A · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during takeoff
From Sheboygan County Memorial Airport (SBM) to General Mitchell International Airport (MKE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA026
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Learjet 35A
- Aircraft type
- Learjet 35
- 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
- N62MB
- Operator
- West Bend Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sheboygan County Memorial Airport (SBM), SHEYBOYGAN, WITo General Mitchell International Airport (MKE)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · roll/run
- 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 airplane had just reached its rotation speed during takeoff, when a deer '...bolted across the front of the aircraft from right to left...' striking the left wing. The pilot said he had to use full right aileron and rudder to keep the airplane level until it reached a low cruise speed. The middle third of the left wing's leading edge was crushed aft. The pilot continued the flight to a larger airport and landed without further incident. The departure runway (where the accident occurred) was located between 2-wooded areas that were about 600 and 1,100-feet from its edge. The airport did not have a perimeter fence around it that would prevent deer from entering the runway environment. The Federal Aviation Administration, in concert with the accident airport's state and county authorities have agreed to install a perimeter fence that is designed to keep deer from straying onto the airport property.
Probable cause
a deer that ran in front of the airplane during the takeoff phase. A factor in this accident was the lack of an airport perimeter fence to prevent deer from getting onto the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA026
- Event ID
- 20001208X08981
- Case number
- CHI98LA026
- 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: investigation status. 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: 5ab1750ff3ebadb61ac3fb197337cfaab2c011ec58ca6e6cd9e72966f66ebf1c; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:19:36.064Z.