NYC04CA022 · Cessna 182M
Cessna 182M · Accident: abrupt maneuver on approach
From 40N · Coatsville, PA to Davis Airstrip (W50)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04CA022
- 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
Cessna 182M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N70800
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 40N · Coatsville, PATo Davis Airstrip (W50), Laytonsville, MD
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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, abrupt
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on final approach, with landing flaps, at a low altitude, transitioning to land when deer ran in front of the airplane. The pilot reported that he thought the airplane would strike the deer, and abruptly pulled back on the control wheel. He also added power; however, the pitch up preceded the engine responding. The pilot said the stall horn sounded momentarily, and then the airplane descended in a nose down attitude and struck the ground, about 150 feet short of the runway and slid for 100 feet. The nose landing gear collapsed, the lower fuselage was crushed, and the firewall was wrinkled. A witness reported that the final approach course brought the airplane over a corn field, where deer have been seen before. The landing distance chart from the Owner's manual revealed the airplane could have crossed the end of the runway at 50 feet, and still stopped within the remaining runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's abrupt evasive maneuver to avoid the deer, which resulted in the loss of airspeed and an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04CA022
- Event ID
- 20031202X01975
- Case number
- NYC04CA022
- 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, coordinates. 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: 256710f3d70c88be9dee7bc2ec0262421089c6c14bf9d96c32f6d6026ac01aab; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:14:34.131Z.