Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 71
Embraer 120RT · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Yeager Airport (CRW)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA054
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Embraer 120RT
- Aircraft type
- Embraer 120
- 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
- N504AS
- Operator
- Atlantic Southeast Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), Atlanta, GATo Yeager Airport (CRW)
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
An Embraer 120RT struck two deer on the runway during a night landing at a tower-operated, rural, mountaintop airport. At the time, skies were overcast, and light snow was falling. The tip of a propeller blade from the number 2 engine separated, and punctured the airplane's fuselage. A runway inspection had commenced shortly before the accident, but the inspection vehicle had not yet reached the area where the accident occurred. There were two breaches in the perimeter fence. Perimeter fence maintenance inspections had been conducted monthly, but were later scheduled to be increased during fall and winter seasons due to higher volumes of deer and greater deer activity. A program to clear the fence line of all brush and weeds, and remove all trees and brush inside the fence, was scheduled to begin during the spring of 2002. Deer elimination procedures within the fence perimeter were in effect; however, as a result of the accident, they were expanded to include deer near the fence. At the time of the accident, a yearlong wildlife management study was scheduled to commence in August 2001.
Probable cause
Deer on the runway. Factors included reduced visibility due to nighttime lighting and light snow conditions, breaches in the perimeter fence, increased seasonal deer activity, and the rural location of the airport.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA054
- Event ID
- 20001220X45463
- Case number
- NYC01LA054
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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 2000-12-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e78a2a072642362c47801445eed97d67d85413939ababc2487e36079ac8f3329; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:19:12.761Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N504AS; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, ASOA.