NYC08CA327 · Piper PA 28-161
Beverly Flight Center Piper PA 28-161 · Accident: wildlife encounter (non-bird) during landing
From Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH) to Beverly Regional Airport (BVY)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA327
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA 28-161
- 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
- N8369A
- Operator
- Beverly Flight Center
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH), Nashua, NHTo Beverly Regional Airport (BVY), Beverly, MA
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Wildlife encounter (non-bird)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) of the Piper PA 28-161 stated that he, a student pilot, and a passenger were conducting an instructional flight in actual instrument meteorological conditions. They returned to their home airport on a cross-country flight, and the CFI executed an instrument approach uneventfully. The airplane then landed on runway 16, a 5,001-foot long, 100-foot wide, asphalt runway. About 5 seconds after touch down, while traveling about 50 knots, the CFI observed four or five deer on the right side of the runway. While the other deer scattered away from the runway, one deer ran onto the runway and into the airplane. The CFI swerved the airplane in an attempt to avoid the impact, but was unable. During the impact, the right wing sustained substantial damage.
Probable cause
An inadvertent collision with a deer while landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA327
- Event ID
- 20081004X12039
- Case number
- NYC08CA327
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 2cd92327c97f00f289f6a378a1f23eef255beb08b32c68ad90598f70c22b71a0; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:23:12.569Z.