NYC04LA026 · Piper PA-28-181
Piper PA-28-181 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From LBJ · Linden, NJ to Montauk Airport (MTP)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA026
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-28-181
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N80852
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LBJ · Linden, NJTo Montauk Airport (MTP), Montauk, NY
- 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
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Evasive maneuver, performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he approached the airport area and attempted to turn on the pilot controlled lighting system at the airport. After several attempts, the only airport lighting the pilot observed illuminated was the windsock. The pilot continued the approach to the airport, and made a "low pass" over the runway to scare any deer away. The pilot then entered a left downwind for the runway, and elected to land without runway lights, due to ambient lighting. After the airplane touched down on the runway, during the rollout, the pilot observed deer crossing in front of the airplane from left to right. The pilot turned the airplane to the left to avoid the deer; however, the left wing struck a small stand of trees, substantially damaging the wing. According to the airport manager, the lighting system was tested the following morning, and all lighting except the runway lights illuminated. On following day, the lighting was tested again, and all lights illuminated. The manager added that it had rained the day before the accident, and the lighting control box was wet when examined.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control after performing an evasive maneuver to avoid a deer crossing the unlit runway, which resulted in a collision with trees. Factors related to the accident were the nighttime conditions, the inoperative runway lighting system, and the deer crossing the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA026
- Event ID
- 20031121X01937
- Case number
- NYC04LA026
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-11-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d53b86152271932d9c506347567aa88f55d36e18c8c908ed0e1d807ef78f585f; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:13:18.308Z.